Infectious disease of the spine needs early diagnosis and definite treatment. Development of magnetic resonance (MR) imaging has made it possible to depict the infectious lesions. MRI seems to be superior to other morphological diagnostic methods for showing the lesions.
We studied 19 consecutive cases diagnosed by MR imaging. Early changes of the spine and soft tissue were diagnosed by MRI correctly in cases of acute onset. Degenerative disc disease made diagnosis difficult in some cases. High signal intensity of the disc on T2 weighted images, and serial axial images showed the lesions. Ga-enhanced MR imaging was also helpful to distinguish infectious from degenerative disc lesions. MR imaging is useful for the diagnosis of infectious spinal disease. In regard to treatment, MR imaging was helpful in deciding on the effectiveness of antibiotics but was not useful for deciding on the duration of antibiotics.
