Although anterior cervical instrumentation was initially used in cervical trauma, because of obvious benefits, indications for its use have been expanded over time to degenerative cases as well as tumor and infection of the cervical spine. Along with a threefold increase in incidence of cervical fusion surgery, implant designs have evolved over the last three decades. Observation of graft subsi...

Dialysis-related spondyloarthropathy is a rare cause of spinal deformity and cervical myelopathy. Optimal management of cervical spine spondyloarthropathy often requires circumferential reconstructive surgery, because affected patients typically have both the anterior column and the facet joints compromised. The occasional presence of noncontiguous or "skip lesions" adds an additional level of ...

The most common reason that adults in the United States see their physician is lower back or neck pain secondary to degenerative disc disease. To date, approaches to treat degenerative disc disease are confined to purely mechanical devices designed to either eliminate or enable flexibility of the diseased motion segment. Tissue engineered intervertebral discs (TE-IVDs) have been proposed as an ...

Cervical radiculopathy is typically caused by posterolateral disc herniation or spondylotic foraminal stenosis. Standard surgical treatment for cervical degenerative disc disease has been either direct anterior excision necessitating fusion or indirect posterior decompression. Anterior decompression has now become more widely used. It can be achieved using different techniques. Anterior fusion ...

Fifty-six patients who underwent anterior fusion utilizing fibular allograft are reviewed. Thirty-two patients underwent multiple-level anterior cervical discectomy and fusion utilizing fibular strut allograft, and 24 underwent anterior lumbar discectomy and fusion using fibular strut allograft. Cervical surgery was performed via the strut technique of Whitecloud and LaRocca and lumbar surgery ...

Anterior cervical spine operations involve decompression of the spinal canal and cervical nerve roots by discectomy or corpectomy in combination with fusion via cage or replacement of a vertebral body. Bailey and Badgley,1 Smith and Robinson,2 and Cloward3 introduced the technique first in the 1950s and the early 1960s. The reported rates of clinical success in the literature are high4 and low-...