Compressive thoracic spondylodiscitis associated with a pleural abscess: Surgical treatment through an enlarged posterior approach.

Abstract

The authors report a case of a patient with paraparesis secondary to T5-T6 spondylodiscitis accompanied by a closely lying, well-formed pleural abscess. This rare association has previously been reported only twice in the literature. The technical difficulty of surgery for both the abscess and the compressive spondylodiscitis was resolved by the use of an enlarged posterior approach. This approach enabled evacuation of the pleural lesion, curettage of the disc space, interbody grafting, and spinal osteosynthesis in one stage.