Introduction: Spinal tuberculosis represents a challenging disease to treat, not because of the technical expertise or the time required to cure it, but more so because of the decisions involved to treat it. The Medical Research Council (MRC) Working Party on Tuberculosis of the Spine designed trials to help address several questions.
Methods: A comprehensive literature search was performed using PubMed Medline, including English articles from 1934 to 1012, which pertain to spinal tuberculosis, with special effort in tracing the 13 MRC reports. The primary focus was on disease eradication, fusion rate, and a secondary focus on both short and long-term results in terms of disease recurrence and alignment. Additional searches were made on the use of spinal implants for infection cases.
Results: After reviewing MRC and non-MRC reports, it was evident that the "Hong Kong operation", which involved radical debridement and strut grafting the lesion, produced better short-, medium- and long-term results in such aspects as fusion rate, spinal deformity and relapse of abscess/sinus. Subsequent work by others demonstrated the importance of prevention of progressive kyphosis, therefore the need to identify risk factors for these and pre-emptive measures such as kyphosis correction, careful graft selection, and instrumentation.
Conclusion: Improvement in quality of life is also accompanied by higher patient expectations. Though developing nations may lack the resources now, eventually patients will demand better functional and cosmetic results after being afflicted by this disfiguring and potentially disabling disease, and the "Hong Kong operation" represented the best outcome, provided resources were available.