Oncological and infectious destructive lesions of the cervical spine in children (literature review)

Abstract

Objective: to analyze the current literature on tumors and osteomyelitis of the cervical spine in children.
Design: a systematic literature review. Material and methods. Рublications were selected from the follow- ing scientific databases Pubmed, eLibrary.ru, Cochrane Library for the period from 2010 to 2021. The final sam- ple included 70 articles containing information about 187 children. Demographic data, clinical manifestations of diseases, features of diagnosis verification, surgical treatment and treatment results were analyzed. Re- sults. Тhe average age of patients in the sample was 9.4 years. The average duration of the diagnostic pause was 8.7 months. The most common complaint was neck pain; the most common etiological causes were tu- berculous spondylitis and benign tumors — 50% and 33%, respectively. Surgical treatment was performed in 81% of cases; the average duration of postoperative follow-up was 47.6 months. Conclusion. Destructive lesions of the cervical spine in children are rare. Sum- marizing these published articles allows to get a more
complete picture of their clinical manifestations and treatment options.