A spinal cord injury is now the most common cause of Charcot Spinal Arthropathy (CSA). Paraplegia, loss of pain sensation, laminectomies, and spinal fusions involving more than 5 levels are all risk factors for developing this condition. Low back pain and spinal abnormalities are common symptoms. Circumferential arthrodesis is the chosen treatment. Implant failure and new-onset CSA, which necessitates re-instrumentation, are some of the risks associated with this treatment. This is the case of a patient with a post-traumatic spinal cord injury presenting with spinal Charcot disease with a very long follow-up. We report a unique complication with the replacement of the discal space and portions of the vertebral bodies by fibrotic tissue with an extraordinary spinal movement in the coronal and sagittal planes. Recurrent Charcot disease at the same level or at a caudal level is a devastating complication in spinal surgery. Since this disease naturally exposes the patient to iterative surgeries, it would be wise to limit the extent of the arthrodesis to an optimal number of levels sufficient to ensure perfect stability of the construct and not to be very extensive from the first surge. The risk would increase the fused levels which limit the availability of mobile buffer levels and increase the stress on the remaining levels. Regular follow-ups to the patient should be done to detect recurrence at the same site or distal to the instrumentation.
Keywords: Charcot disease; Charcot spinal arthropathy; New-onset Charcot spinal arthropathy; Spinal cord injury; Spinal movement.
© Indian Orthopaedics Association 2023. Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.