Morphological Characteristics of Lumber Pedicle: A Study of Adult Nigerian Cadaver

Knowledge of pedicle morphometry is important in the surgeons' ability to successfully apply a surgical screw to the spine of patients who need instrumentation for various reasons.This is more so considering that a wrongly placed pedicle screw can produce complications worse than the actual injury itself.Often these may present as spinal cord or nerve root injuries, pedicle fractures, vascular injuries, leakage of cerebrospinal fluid among several others.A total of 185 adult lumber vertebrae, prepared through soil and water maceration were used in this study.There were 34 sets of males and three sets of females.Craniocaudal increase was noted in Pedicle length and thickness from L1 to L5 but this was not statistically significant.Pedicle width was observed to increase in a similar manner.Females had higher pedicle values than their male counterparts and the least was 8.25 mm.The study concludes that pedicle dimensions vary among population and between sex and recommend proper pre-operative evaluation and assessments prior to surgical instrumentation on the lumbar spine.