These are two common procedures of vertebral augmentation, a category of minimally invasive spine surgery designed to immediately stabilize a vertebral fracture to treat the patient's pain and prevent progressive spinal deformity.
Both vertebroplasty and kyphoplasty procedures involve the placement of bone cement into the fractured vertebra through small, minimally invasive incisions in the skin under X-ray guidance using fluoroscopy
These procedures are most commonly used in cases of severe, functionally disabling pain caused by a vertebral fracture that does not improve over a number of weeks with pain medication and treatment with brace immobilization.
Kyphoplasty is so named because it attempt to directly reduce the kyphosis that results from vertebral body collapse.
In kyphoplasty, an inflatable balloon is placed into the broken vertebra and used to reduce the vertebral body collapse towards its original shape. The central void created after removal of the balloon is then filled with stabilizing material, leaving the material in place to stabilize the fracture in the improved vertebral shape.
This vertebral augmentation procedure involve either no manipulation or only external reduction of the fracture by extension when placing the patient on the operating table before the material is injected into the fracture site.