It sounds by your description that you had a burst fracture of T12; “There is some retropulsion of bone into the canal”. This is somewhat a common fracture from your mechanism of injury. A burst fracture means that the vertebral body has broken apart like a barrel made of staves and held together with metal bands would do so if dropped from a height (the barrel would “burst” apart).
There is a possibility that you might have had a flexion-distraction fracture. This type of fracture involves not only injury to the bone of the vertebra but also the posterior ligaments (intraspinous, supraspinous and facet capsules). These posterior ligaments prevent the vertebra from falling into kyphosis (bending forward in what is called a tension band) with a “wedge fracture” like you describe. If these ligaments are torn, there is nothing to prevent the spine from falling forward and the kyphosis that is generated is relatively severe (greater than 25 degrees).
If you have significant kyphosis (you use the “Cobb technique” to measure-greater than 25 degrees), then you probably need to consider a surgical repair to straighten out the spine. The”kyphoplasty” is generally not the technique to use to repair these fractures as the cement is incapable of correcting the angulation and fixes the fracture so that healing bone edges may not fully join together.
Find out what your kyphosis of the T11-L1 levels measures. If you have further questions, please let me know if I can help.
Dr. Corenman
Donald Corenman, MD, DC is a highly-regarded spine surgeon, considered an expert in the area of neck and back pain. Trained as both a Medical Doctor and Doctor of Chiropractic, Dr. Corenman earned academic appointments as Clinical Assistant Professor and Assistant Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, and his research on spine surgery and rehabilitation has resulted in the publication of multiple peer-reviewed articles and two books.