Spinal osteomyelitis

Osteomyelitis of the spine (OP) is a relatively rare disease. The acute form of OP was first described by Lannelongue in 1897, the chronic form by Wohlgemuth in 1898 [cit. 33]. According to V.F. Voyno-Yasenetsky [12], in 1910 Grisel collected only 85 cases of this disease in the literature. Of subsequent early publications, Wilensky [161] and Kulowsky [108] should be noted. By 1964, about 450 patients with OP treated with surgical and conservative methods were described in the literature [46]. In the future, reports of OP are much more common [3,15,16,23,35,39,96].