Lumbosacral transitional vertebrae in children and adolescents (literature review, illustrated with clinical observations)

Introduction An analysis of the medical literature devoted to various aspects of transitional lumbosacral vertebrae shows that there are very few publications covering the course of this disease in  the  pediatric and adolescent population.

Aim To study the issues of epidemiology, diagnosis, treatment and prevention of transitional lumbosacral vertebrae in paediatric and adolescent patients based on the analysis of current medical literature and illustrate the material with our own clinical observations.

Material and methods To analyze the literature on the topic, 75 papers published between 1984 and 2023 were selected. Among them, there were 7 (9.3 %) domestic literary sources, 68 (90.7 %) were foreign. In the process of searching for scientific articles, the resources of the electronic databases of current medical information PubMed and CyberLeninka were used.

Results and discussion The incidence of transitional vertebrae in children and adolescents is 16.8 % of clinical observations, as reported. In the structure of the transitional vertebrae in children, type II of  the  disease predominates according to the classification Castellvi et al (1984), 43.2 % of cases. The main clinical symptom of the pathology is pain of lumbosacral location, the intensity of which on the visual analog scale in children corresponds to an average of 3.0 points. In adult patients with similar pathology, the average pain intensity measured with the same scale is 7.5 points. The most informative method for  diagnosing the  disease is computed tomography, which allows obtaining both 3D images and sections at the level of pseudarthrosis between the enlarged transverse process (or processes) of the suprasacral vertebra and the wing of the sacrum. To  relieve pain in children with transitional vertebrae, both conservative and surgical methods are used. The most commonly used procedure is pseudarthrectomy. The study of  long-term results one year after the intervention allowed us to record the absence of pain in children who underwent surgery. Prevention measures for transitional lumbosacral vertebrae have not been developed.

Conclusion The analysis of the published literature shows that transitional vertebrae are a frequently diagnosed pathology in children and adolescents. Current methods of imaging are able to accurately detect not only the  presence of the disease, but also to differentiate its type. The main clinical symptom of  transitional vertebrae is pain in the lumbosacral spine which is difficult to relieve with conservative therapy. Pseudarthrectomy is the most frequent surgical method of treatment in children and adolescents that provides stable relief of vertebrogenic pain syndrome. Measures for specific prevention of the disease have not been developed.

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