Spondylodiscitis, 2016: learning from clinical cases

Key words: Spondylodiscitis, Vertebral infection, Spinal MRI, Kingella kingae

Spondylodiscitis is an infectious disease that involves two contiguous vertebrae and the interposed disc; it affects children in the first years of life when the local vascularization is characterized by the persistence of connecting vessels. It is a rarity and the fact that it can present in different ways often leads to a severe diagnostic delay. Starting from four clinical cases of spondylodiscitis, the paper aims at underlining several peculiarities of the disease in order to convey some take-home messages to diagnose it and treat it correctly.