Cervical arthroplasty.

Anterior cervical decompression and fusion (ACDF) is a common surgical technique for treating patients with symptomatic degenerative cervical disc disease, which is refractory to nonoperative therapy.4,5,15 This exposure allows for safe neural decompression, and the arthrodesis effectively halts the degenerative process at the treated segment. Although the results of ACDF are generally in the good to excellent range, single-level procedures do alter spinal kinematics and multilevel procedures compromise global spinal motion. There is currently a tremendous interest in the preservation of the cervical spinal functional motion segment after anterior decompression. This may be accomplished with a total disc arthroplasty. The purpose of this communication is to present some of the data supporting the concept of cervical spinal arthroplasty and review the devices currently in United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA)approved trials.