Anterior dural tear in thoracic and lumbar spinal fractures: Single-center experience with coating technique and literature review of the available strategies

Differently from the posterior, the anterior dural tears associated with spinal fractures are rarely reported and debated. We document our experience with a coating technique for repairing ventral dural lacerations, providing an associated literature review on the available strategies to seal off such dural defects. A PubMed search on watertight repair techniques of anterior dural lacerations focused on their association with spinal fractures was performed. Studies on animal or cadaveric models, on cervical spine, or based on seal/gelfoam or “not suturing” strategies were excluded. 10 studies were finally selected and our experience of three patients with thoracic/lumbar spinal fractures with associated ventral dural tear was integrated into the analysis of the surgical techniques. Among the described repair techniques for ventral dural lacerations a preference for primary suturing, mostly trans-dural, was noted (n = 6/10 papers). Other documented strategies were the plugging of the dural opening with a fat graft sutured to its margins, or stitched to the dura adjacent to the defect, and the closure of the dural tear with two patches, both trans-dural and epidural. Our coating techniques of the whole dural sac with the heterologous patch were revealed as safe and effective alternatives strategies, even when patch flaps wrapping nerve roots have to be cut and a fat graft has to be stitched in the patch respectively for sealing off antero-lateral and wide anterior dural tears. Compared to all the documented strategies for obtaining a watertight closure of an anterior dural laceration, the coating techniques revealed advantages of preserving neural structures, being adaptable to anterior and antero-lateral dural tears of any size.