Copyright
©The Author(s) 2021. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Clin Cases. Feb 26, 2021; 9(6): 1402-1407
Published online Feb 26, 2021. doi: 10.12998/wjcc.v9.i6.1402
Published online Feb 26, 2021. doi: 10.12998/wjcc.v9.i6.1402
Thoracic pyogenic infectious spondylitis presented as pneumothorax: A case report
Mi-Kyung Cho, Byeong-Ju Lee, Jae-Hyeok Chang, Young-Mo Kim, Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, Pusan National University Hospital, Busan 49241, South Korea
Author contributions: Lee BJ and Cho MK conceived the report; Cho MK wrote the first draft with input from all authors; Kim YM, Lee BJ analyzed and interpreted the patient data regarding the disease; Chang JH and Lee BJ examined and approved the manuscript; all authors critically reviewed and issued final approval for the version to be submitted.
Supported by a Clinical Research Grant from Pusan National University Hospital in 2020.
Informed consent statement: Informed written consent was obtained from the patient for publication of this report.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
CARE Checklist (2016) statement: The authors had read the CARE Checklist (2016), and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the CARE Checklist (2016)
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Byeong-Ju Lee, MD, Assistant Professor, Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, Pusan National University Hospital, 179 Gudeok-ro, Seo-gu, Busan 49241, South Korea. lbjinishs@gmail.com
Received: October 20, 2020
Peer-review started: October 20, 2020
First decision: December 13, 2020
Revised: December 27, 2020
Accepted: January 12, 2021
Article in press: January 12, 2021
Published online: February 26, 2021
Peer-review started: October 20, 2020
First decision: December 13, 2020
Revised: December 27, 2020
Accepted: January 12, 2021
Article in press: January 12, 2021
Published online: February 26, 2021
Core Tip
Core Tip: Back or neck pain is the most common symptom in over 90% of pyogenic infectious spondylitis (PIS) cases. Anatomically, abscesses occur most often in the spine posterior region because lesions are more likely to develop in larger epidural spaces that contain infection-prone fat. However, in the case presented herein, the spinal abscess initially found in the anterior area of the T8–9 disc and anterior epidural space, spreading contiguously to the lung pleura and causing pleural effusion and pneumothorax. This difference in abscess location may explain the PIS presentation with nonspecific symptoms, such as chest pain and dyspnea.