경추부 화학적 용해술 후 6개월째 적외선 체열 촬영을 이용한 평가 = Six-month Follow-up Evaluation of Cervical Chemonucleolysis with Digital Infrared Thermographic Imaging

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Background : Chemonucleolysis with chymopapain has been shown to be an effective alternative to microsurgery for the treatment of cervical disc herniation. This prospective study was designed to evaluate 1-year results in patients with symptomatic cervical disc herniations.
Methods : Between June 1995 and May 1998, sixty patients underwent chemonucleolysis with chymopapain for herniated cervical disc herniations. In June 1995 the senior author (B.C.J) began a prospective study of all patients who were to undergo cervical chemonucleolysis for cervical soft disc herniations presenting with intractable cervicobrachial pain, confirmed by computerized tomography (CT) and/or magnetic resonance (MR) imaing. All patients were to undertake digital infrared thermographic imaging (DITI) before operation, at 6 weeks and 6 months.
Results : The male/female ratio was 42:18. The average age was 38.2 years. The clinical success rate was 84% at 6 weeks and 88.2% at 6 months, with no statistically significant difference. The thermographic success rate was 78.3% at 6 weeks and 80.4% at 6 months with no statistically significant difference. There was no statisically significant difference in clinical and thermographic success rate betweeen 6 weeks and 6 months.
Conclusions : We suggest that clinical and thermographic improvement after cervical chemonucleolysis could be maintained at 6 months after operation, and DITI could be a very useful technology for good correlation with clinical outcome.