Poster Presentation Sydney Spinal Symposium 2019

Radiological evaluation of cervical spine degeneration from cord signal changes (#30)

Sara SK Kim 1 2 , Ji JT Tu 1 2 , Kyle KS Sheldrick 1 2 , Xiaolong XC Chen 1 2 , Boaz BS Shulruf 2 , Ashish AD Diwan 1 2
  1. Spine Service UNSW, Sydney, NSW, Australia
  2. University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia

There is a dearth of a reliable system for quantitative evaluation of cervical spine degeneration. It is also not clear whether more degeneration is associated with cord signal changes. In this study, 120 MRI cervical scans were retrospectively obtained from an imaging facility in Southern Sydney and reviewed with the purpose of developing a reliable radiological measure for cervical spine degeneration, and studying associations between cord signal changes and features of cervical spine degeneration.  Inter-observer reliability was calculated using the Kappa statistic and the intraclass correlation coefficient to determine the reliability of measurements among three observers; associations between cord signal change and cervical spine degeneration for each level of the cervical spine were calculated using Spearman correlation. Based on the results, we have determined that it is possible to develop reliable radiological measure for cervical spine degeneration. On the other hand, it was not possible to identify associations between cord signal change and features of cervical spine degeneration. Further studies will be required to do provide more definitive answers.