Intervertebral disc calcifications in children

Abstract

Apart from the calcification in the patient with cervical pain, all calcifications were asymptomatic and constituted an incidental finding (particularly those detected at the thoracic level in the patient studied for sunflower-seed inhalation). Calcification shapes were either linear or round. Our series confirms that intervertebral disc calcifications are a rare finding in childhood and should not be a source of concern: symptomatic calcifications tend to regress spontaneously within a short time with or without therapy and immobilisation, whereas asymptomatic calcifications may last for years but disappear before the age of 20 years. Only very few cases, such as those of medullary compression or severe dysphagia due to anterior herniation of cervical discs, may require surgical procedures.

Cervical intervertebral disc calcification with extreme lateral herniation in a child: T2-weighted signal intensity of the involved disc can be restored to normal

“…Despite of several possible proposed factors such as trauma [1,4,6,15,18,19], infection [1,3,14,15], vascular nature [2,10,13,20], autoimmune disease [20], congenital anomaly [2,4,7], and metabolic diseases [2,4], the exact aetiology of IDC in children is still unclear [1][2][3][4][5][6].…”

“…A large majority of cases with the thoracic or lumbar IDC are usually asymptomatic and incidentally found during imaging examination [1,2,4,6]. Nevertheless, patients with cervical IDC frequently present with neck pain and occasionally associate with neurological deficit [1-3, 5, 9, 12, 15, 18], fever [6], torticollis [1,10,14,17] or dysphagia [1,8].…”

“…The prognosis of IDC is usually excellent, which mainly depends on the benign natural history of this condition despite the exact mechanism is still unclear [1][2][3][4][5][6]20]. There was a rapid disappearance of the clinical symptoms in over 95 % of cases within a few weeks to several months [1,2,6,12].…”

“…Intervertebral disc calcification (IDC) in children is a rare kind of spinal disease characterized by a benign self-limiting calcification of the involved disc [1][2][3][4][5][6].…”

“…The initial X-ray and computed tomography (CT) appearances of IDC showed high-density masses in the intervertebral space, while T2-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) revealed decreased signal intensity of the involved disc [3,[5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17]. The follow-up X-ray and CT images in most cases showed the resorption of calcification within a few months to several years [3,4,[13][14][15], but it has never been reported whether MRI signal intensity of the involved disc could be restored back to normal. In addition, IDC with posterior or anterior herniated calcification has been commonly reported in the literature [1-4, 6, 14, 17].…”