Dear Editor of Asian Spinal Journal

Dear Editor of Asian Spinal Journal,

With regards to the letter from Dr. Mohamed El-Sayed Abdel-Wanis, which commented on our article entitled, "Treatment of acute tuberculous spondylitis by the spinal shortening osteotomy: technical notes and case illustration", first of all, we need to confirm the originality of our surgical technique as it was true that we did not locate your article through the Medline literature article search describing this technique, which was published in the Journal of musculoskeletal research. Concerning the surgical technique, there were some differences between our technique and the technique presented by Dr. Mohamed. Dr. Mohamed has treated spinal infections (both bacterial and tuberculosis) with the posterior only approach, but he did limited spinal shortening and still used the anterior spinal reconstruction, which was in contrast to our technique that collapses the vertebral body against each other in order to create bone to bone contact which should promote bony healing and avoid the requirement of any anterior reconstruction. Moreover, in our technique, we do not encounter with progressive kyphosis and neurological deterioration.

It is our pleasure to read the letter from Dr. Mohamed since we are treating tuberculosis with nearly the same technique, which should emphasize that this posterior only approach for the treatment of tuberculous spondilitis has some advantages over the others and thus should be the alternative approach regarding the treatment of this condition.