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Introduction: When needed operative treatment of sacral fractures is mostly performed with percutaneous iliosacral screw fixation. The advantage of navigation in insertion of pedicle screws already could be shown by former investigations. The aim of this investigation was now to analyze which influence iliosacral screw placement guided by navigation has on duration of surgery, radiation exposure and accuracy of screw placement compared to the technique guided by fluoroscopy., Methods: 68 Consecutive patients with sacral fractures who have been treated by iliosacral screws were inclouded. Overall, 85 screws have been implanted in these patients. Beside of demographic data the duration of surgery, duration of radiation, dose of radiation and accuracy of screw placement were analyzed., Results: When iliosacral screw placement was guided by navigation instead of fluoroscopy the dose of radiation per inserted screw (155.0 cGy*cm 2 vs. 469.4 cGy*cm 2 p < 0.0001) as well as the duration of radiation use (84.8 s vs. 147.5 s p < 0.0001) were significantly lower. The use of navigation lead to a significant reduction of duration of surgery (39.0 min vs. 60.1 min p < 0.01). The placement of the screws showed a significantly higher accuracy when performed by navigation (0 misplaced screws vs 6 misplaced screws-p < 0.0001)., Conclusion: Based on these results minimal invasive iliosacral screw placement guided by navigation seems to be a safe procedure, which leads to a reduced exposure to radiation for the patient and the surgeon, a reduced duration of surgery as well as a higher accuracy of screw placement., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Study Design: This study was a retrospective radiographic analysis of consecutive patients., Objectives: To analyze exposure to radiation of the surgeon and-separately-of patients in minimally invasive surgery (MIS) of multilevel posterior stabilization by percutaneous pedicle screw insertion guided by navigation (PIN) versus percutaneous pedicle screw insertion guided by fluoroscopy (PIF)., Summary of Background Data: Spine surgeons are exposed to a 12-fold higher dose of radiation than other nonspinal musculoskeletal surgeons and PIF in MIS leads to a 2-fold higher dose of radiation than in open surgery. PIN might reduce the dose of radiation for the surgeon and the patient, especially in multilevel MIS surgery. To the best of our knowledge, there are only rare data of short-segment fusions that do not focus on exposure to radiation of surgeons., Methods: After power analysis, we included 205 consecutive screws (22 patients). We monitored dose of radiation (recorded separately for patient and surgeon), accuracy of screw placement, time of operation, and approach-related complications., Results: In PIN, only 58.7% of dose area product (cGy×cm) per screw of PIF was determined for patients (P<0.01). The surgeon was only exposed to 19.9% of radiation per screw in PIN compared with dosage in PIF (P<0.01). Four of 205 screws (2.0%) were classified as being incorrectly positioned: 2 of 87 screws (2.3%) in PIF and 2 of 118 screws (1.7%) in PIN (P>0.05). We did not observe any wound infections., Conclusions: PIN in MIS is a safe procedure and does, compared with PIF, lead to significant reduction of radiation dose for patients and-even more-for spine surgeons.