gh A NEW APPROACH TO TREATMENT OF OSTEOMYELITIS

Anatoly Tsybin — Ph.D. (Medicine), head physician of the Central Regional Hospital of Serpukhov suggests a new method for treating osteomyelitis. The treatment requires time, sometimes several years, but the disease does not come back any more.

Osteomyelitis, or bone suppurative inflammation is a serious problem. The disease does not yield to treatment in approximately one third of cases. The reason of osteomyelitis origin may vary: infection or mechanical injury, but in any case, the disease takes a common course. When a bone gets inflamed, microcirculation in it is affected, liquid is accumulated in the bone tissue and pressure increases. The bone suppurates and ruins. However, host defenses resist the process, and new bone appears in place of destroyed one. As inflammation continues, the organism has no time to fully restore the bone, and it patches up the holes with immature tissue. As a result, the sore bone resembles mosaic. There are cavities in it, pathologic fractures, bone tissue defects, immature bone layers. The longer the bone preserves the conditions promoting its destruction, the more difficult it is cure the disease.

To relieve a patient from osteomyelitis, it is necessary to stop inflammation first of all, so that the bone could normally restore. As practice shows, if the bone is injured and has fistulas or cavities where liquid can flow into from time to time, inflammatory process transforms from an acute into a chronic form. A.A. Tsybin suggests to use suction drainage to cure osteomyelitis, i.e. to aspirate the intercellular liquid stagnant in the bone. If liquid is not accumulated in the tissue, there occurs no festering or destruction in it. Toxicosis caused by constant tissue destruction is gradually over and the bone restores.

Strictly speaking, the traditional method for treating osteomyelitis provides for inflammation focus cleaning and drainage. But this is a one-time operation, and bone restoration needs time, therefore, osteomyelitis cannot be cured within several days or even weeks. The suction drainage is installed to the patient, the drainage creates rarefaction within the limits of 0.1-0.35 mm Hg in the osteomyelitis area. It is more preferable to do this through a fistula or a separate hole in the bone. The drainage tube is introduced in the most sparing way, so the method is suitable even for treatment of small children.

The drainage is to be performed until the normal bone structure is restored. In some cases, this required more than three years. But the restored bone acquires durability and resistance to infection. 114 patients were treated by this method at the Central Regional Hospital of Serpukhov: 55 of them suffering from acute osteomyelitis and 59 – from chronic osteomyelitis. There were 45 children among the patients. All the patients were observed from 8 to 20 years. Practically all of them were successfully cured, the physicians recorded only one relapse case during the observation period.

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