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Anatomy of lumbosacral spinal nerve roots

Article  in  Acta Neurochirurgica · March 2015

DOI: 10.1007/s00701-015-2374-z · Source: PubMed

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Domenico d'avella Luca Denaro

University-Hospital of Padova University of Padova
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Acta Neurochir (2015) 157:1425
DOI 10.1007/s00701-015-2374-z

LETTER TO THE EDITOR - NEUROSURGICAL ANATOMY

Anatomy of lumbosacral spinal nerve roots

Domenico d’Avella & Luca Denaro

Received: 8 February 2015 / Accepted: 11 February 2015 / Published online: 15 March 2015
# Springer-Verlag Wien 2015

Dear Editor,
We would like to compliment Dr. Kirazh and colleagues on
their recent detailed morphological study of the spinal dorsal
root entry zone [Kirazh Ö, Tatarli N, Güçlü B, Ceylan D, Ziyal
İ, Keleş E, Çavdar S (2014) Acta Neurochir 156: 2351-2358].
They reported on the variations of the posterolateral sulcus,
including the average number of rootlets at each spinal level,
emphasising their microsurgical implications, especially for
DREZ operations.
In their observations, the number of dorsal rootlets at the
lumbar level ranged between four and eight, the number of
rootlets was lowest at L5, and the rest of the lumbar levels
were rather constant. The authors stated they Bcould not find
any study to compare our results at the lumbar level^.
We would like to bring to the readers' attention that
this study extends and completes our previous microsur-
gical work [1] on lumbosacral spinal roots, describing
the microanatomy of the entry zone of the posterior and
anterior roots into the spinal cord and the occurrence of
intrathecal anastomoses between the dorsal and ventral
roots.
Thus, these two reports mutually contribute to the under-
standing that the posterolateral sulcus does not exhibit a con-
stant anatomical pattern and that a variety of interconnections
may occur between the afferent lumbosacral spinal nerve
roots, so the spinal cord is made up of a series of neuromeres
overlapping to some extent.
We emphasise that knowledge of these variations is impor-
tant for achieving successful surgeries in this region.
Reference
1. d’Avella D, Mingrino S (1979) Microsurgical anatomy of lumbosacral
spinal roots. J Neurosurg 51:819–823

D. d’Avella (*) : L. Denaro

Department of Neurosciences, Academic Neurosurgery, University
of Padova, Via Giustiniani 2, 35128 Padova, Italy
e-mail: domenico.davella@unipd.it

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