Pyogenic Spinal Infection

Pyogenic spinal infection (spondylodiscitis) is a life-threatening medical condition. Over the past three decades, its incidence has increased 15-fold. This is in part due to the aging of the population, increase in immunocompromised patients, and better diagnostic abilities. While we routinely care for these patients, treatment is still not standardized and is mostly done according to local preferences. Moreover, when uttering the words “spinal infection” among medical colleagues, we have come to realize that few practitioners will think of the same clinical picture. Some associated it with postinterventional infectious complications and vertebral osteomyelitis, while others with spinal epidural abscess or spondylodiscitis. In some regions of the world, spinal infections may evoke the suspicion of Pott's disease. In other regions, the pathology is dominated by young patients with habits of intravenous drug abuse, yet again others may refer to frailty-fraught fraction of geriatric patients with diabetes on dialysis. Regardless of regional differences, etiology, and terminology, the disease has been posing a formidable challenge to all involved in its management.