The final products represent the consensus of a group of expert spine surgeons. The checklist includes the most important and high-yield items to consider when responding to IONM changes in patients with a stable spine, whereas the IONM guideline represents the group consensus on items that should be considered best practice among IONM teams with the appropriate resources.

"Non-neurologic complications following surgery for adolescent idiopathic scoliosis

Preoperative PFTs are clinically impaired in 19% of AIS patients, and correlate significantly with the MT and sagittal plane deformity severity, and with PT curve severity to a lesser degree. PFTs do not correlate with degree of axial deformity. From a purely pulmonary standpoint, attention directed to coronal and sagittal plane deformity correction appears warranted, to address the specific deformities which are associated with PFT impairment.

More patients tended to receive wound drains than not receive wound drains. Drains did not impact complication rate and drained patients received more blood product. There are no universal criteria for draining and practice patterns vary widely.

Level III therapeutic study.

No abstract

Use of preoperative MRI was 41.8%; 9.9% of patients with so-called "idiopathic" scoliosis had an abnormality on MRI, of which 4.2% were neural anomalies. Of these, syrinx was 66.7%, Chiari was 30.7%, and tethered cord was 2.6%. Significant risk factors for neural abnormality were thoracic hyperkyphosis and juvenile onset. Other characteristics, including apex left thoracic curve, Risser less than or equal to 1, large curve magnitude, triple major curve, male sex, and obesity were not associated with neural abnormality. There were no differences in complication rates between normal and abnormal MRI patients. Our data question the routine use of MRI as a screening tool for adolescent idiopathic scoliosis.

Five competitive cyclists (four male and one female) were studied during 95 min of bicycle ergometer exercise (approx. 65% V02max) to determine the effects of ingesting caffeine before exercise (CAF) (5mg/kg body weight) , fructose before exercise (FRU) (lg/kg) , glucose during exercise (GLU) (lg/kg), a combination of caffeine/fructose before plus glucose during exercise (CFG) (same quantities as other trials), and a control (CON) on muscle glycogen utilization during exercise. Each subject performed all trials with not less than seven days and not more than fourteen days between trials. Preexercise ingestion occured one hour prior to exercise and ingestion during exercise began fifteen minutes into the ride. Muscle biopsies were performed before initial ingestion (BIM) and following exercise (FEM). Muscle glycogen levels were similar in all five trials, both before ingestion (CON = 152.0 umol/gr W.w., CAF = 144.6, CFG = 135.7, FRU = 146.5, GLU = 138.2) and following exercise (CON = 60.66, CAF = 81.44, CFG = 68.72,FRU =79.86, GLU = 76.40). Muscle glycogen utilization, however, was greater (P < 0.05) during trial CON than trials CAF and GLU. Although not statistically significant, there was a trend (P < 0.1) towards lower glycogen utilization in trials CFG and FRU when compared with trial CON. No significant differences were observed between trials CAF, CFG, FRU, and GLU. These data indicate that caffeine ingestion before exercise and glucose ingestion during exercise can decrease muscle glycogen utilization.