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Spinal cord is located in the spinal canal. The spinal cord consists of the nerves connecting the brain to the arms, legs and the body, transmitting messages between these organs. They act like electric cables. They transmit the messages from the brain to the muscles to trigger movements.
The nerves and/or the spinal cord can be trapped or compressed by traumatic injuries, implants, and deformity correction. Such injuries can intraoperatively be monitored and diagnosed in order to take the necessary actions before permanent neurologic injury occurs.
Monitoring can be done by specialists using a dedicated device called intraoperative neurophysiological monitoring or simply neuromonitorization.
What are the advantages of the neuromonitorization?
Nerve injuries are feared complications of spinal surgeries. Misplaced screws or intolerance of the spinal cord to the correction may cause nerve injuries. Neurologic injury incidences for scoliosis surgeries were high back in the 1960s. Today, nerve injury rates are low to a wide extent, especially when neuromonitorization is used. The neurological injury rates are much lower in specialized centers and in the hands of experienced surgeons when neuromonitorization is done by neurologists. Additionally, in the few centers where the navigation technology is used, the screw misplacement rates are lower.