Can a short spinal cord produce scoliosis?

Some patients with scoliosis have a relatively short vertebral canal. This poses the question of whether a short spinal cord may sometimes cause scoli osis. The present paper presents two observations that may support this con cept. It presents a scoliosis model demonstrating what effect a short, unfo rgiving spinal cord might have on the spinal column. The model uses two fle xible parallel tubes with the facility to tighten one. It demonstrates that a short, unforgiving spinal cord could produce the abnormal rotatory anato my observed at the apex in scoliosis, with first lordosis, then lateral dev iation and finally a rotation of the vertebral column, with the rotation oc curring between the canal and the vertebral body, around the axis of the co rd. The anatomy of the apical vertebra is described from two museum specime ns, a computed tomography (CT) myelogram and seven magnetic resonance imagi ng (MRI) studies. The study confirms that the vertebral canal and the inter vertebral foraminae retain their original orientation. The spinal cord is e ccentric in the canal towards the concavity of the curve; the major compone nt of rotation occurs anterior to the vertebral canal and the axis of this rotation seems to be at the site of the spinal cord. These observations do not establish that a short spinal cord will result in scoliosis, but the re sults are compatible with this hypothesis, and that impairment of spinal co rd growth factors may sometimes be responsible for scoliosis.