TITLE:
Vitamin B12 Screening in Cervical Spine Surgery Patients
AUTHORS:
Abdullah Tolaymat, Moataz Abbara, M. Sami Walid, Mohammed Ajjan, Joe Sam Robinson Jr
KEYWORDS:
Vitamin B12; cobalamin, Cervical Spine Surgery
JOURNAL NAME:
Neuroscience and Medicine,
Vol.2 No.2,
June
29,
2011
ABSTRACT: Introduction
Vitamin B12 is very vital for the nervous system. Its deficiency can manifest with neurological symptoms like pain and paresthesias and in severe cases may cause not completely restorable neurological damage, especially in elderly patients.
Methods
The charts of 702 patients who underwent cervical spine surgery retrospectively reviewed and data collected . All patients were preoperatively seen by an internist who ordered Vit B12 levels for some of them. We used two thresholds for the diagnosis of vitamin B12 deficiency, 200 and 300 pg/mL as recommended by Yao et al. 1992.
Data were also collected on gender, payor status, myelopathy, hemoglobin level, corpuscular parameters and glycosylated hemoglobin level (HbA1c). Vitamin B12 levels were compared between patients with HbA1c levels ≥ 6.1% and