Thirty-one patients with osteoid-osteoma and eleven patients with
osteoblastoma of the spine were evaluated after operative excision of the
tumor. The average duration of symptoms in the seventeen patients whose
tumor had been diagnosed by technetium bone-scanning was twelve months, as
compared with thirty-five months in the twenty-five patients who had been
diagnosed without the aid of bone-scanning. There were no false-negative
bone scans. Scoliosis was present in fourteen of eighteen patients with a
lumbar lesion, in ten patients with a thoracic lesion, and in two of the
twelve patients with a cervical lesion. Twelve of the twenty-six patients
with scoliosis had had symptoms for less than fifteen months before
diagnosis (Group A), and eleven had had symptoms for more than fifteen
months (Group B). The duration of symptoms was unknown in the other three
patients. Eleven of the twelve patients in Group A had a decrease in or
complete correction of scoliosis after excision of the tumor, whereas ten
of the eleven patients in Group B had no decrease in the pre-operative
scoliosis.