Percutaneous intervention of the C2 vertebral body using a CT guided posterolateral approach.

Abstract

Image-guided percutaneous interventions such as biopsy or vertebroplasty are well-established procedures and considered as substitutes for open surgery [1.6].However, image-guided percutaneous intervention of the C2 body presents technical difficulties and requires caution to avoid potential injury of the vital structures that surround the C2 vertebra. Percutaneous intervention of the C2 body typically has been performed using the transoral approach, which requires general anesthesia [1, 6].In our department, we have performed percutaneous biopsy or vertebroplasty of the C2 vertebral body using a CT-guided posterolateral approach under local anesthesia. To our knowledge, there has been only one previous report of the posterolateral approach for biopsy of the C2 vertebral body [4].This article presents two cases of percutaneous biopsy and one case of vertebroplasty of the C2 body using a CT-guided posterolateral approach under local anesthesia.