Utilization of paraspinal muscles for triggered EMG during thoracic pedicle screw placement.

A novel intraoperative neurophysiological technique for testing the integrity of the pedicle during screw fixation for spinal deformity surgery is presented. The thoracic paraspinal muscles at the appropriate level are used as the electromyogram (EMG) pick-up for direct current stimulation of the thoracic pedicle screw at that level. This technique is shown to give reliable and reproducible results. This technique is found to produce more reliable data than the methods most commonly used at this time.