A STUDY OF THE KYPHOTIC SPINAL COLUMN

¹ Anatomical Laboratory, Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio and Child Welfare Research Station, State University of Iowa, Iowa City

1. This study is subsequent to two others upon which it is based.

2. It is an effort to analyze quantitatively the vertebral centra of kyphotic columns which have not yet developed fusion of successive centra or otherwise become pathologically modified.

3. We have not found congenital anomalies necessarily associated with kyphosis, nor have we found such columns presenting age features in advance of their years.

4. Although some columns do become markedly kyphotic even during the fourth decade, the deformity is more rarely found below sixty years than in greater age.

5. Kyphotic columns, again, are potentially long columns, though we would not imply that there is any necessary connection between these two features.

6. The analysis of summated lengths of cervical, thoracic, and lumbar regions is equivocal, whether ventral vertical or dorsal vertical height of centrum is measured. The anomaly must be sought locally.

7. The exaggerated curvature of the kyphotic columns tends to express itself most clearly in the sixth and seventh thoracic vertebrae.

8. Compensatory lordosis of the lower column involves one vertebra more than the normal ventral convexity comprises, namely the first lumbar.

9. The lumbar lordosis is far from compensatory for the thoracic kyphosis.

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