BACKGROUND Surgical intervention is increasingly performed as the primary treatment of unstable Hangman's fracture. Some authors have advocated using anterior C2/3 discectomy with interbody fusion and plating to treat unstable Hangman's fracture combined with intervertebral disc injury; however, there are few reports on unstable Hangman's fracture treated by anterior interbody fusion with the c...

Anterior cervical fusion has become a standard of care for numerous pathologic conditions of the cervical spine. However, subsequent development of clinically significant disc disease at levels adjacent to fused discs is a serious long-term complication of this procedure. As more patients live longer after surgery, it is foreseeable that adjacent segment pathology (ASP) will develop in increasi...

OBJECT The objective of this systematic review was to use evidence-based medicine to identify the indications and utility of anterior cervical nerve root decompression. METHODS The National Library of Medicine and Cochrane Database were queried using MeSH headings and key words relevant to surgical management of cervical radiculopathy. Abstracts were reviewed after which studies meeting inclu...

A 51-year-old man underwent a C5-C7 anterior decompression and fusion. Six years later the patient complained of dysphagia caused by displacement of the cervical plate. One week after the scheduled removal of the implanted material, the patient developed a painful cervical swelling and fever. His cervical radiographs showed that a screw was missing compared to previous studies. Computerized tom...

STUDY DESIGN Systematic review. OBJECTIVE To compare the effectiveness and safety between iliac crest bone graft (ICBG), non-ICBG autologous bone, and allograft in cervical spine fusion. To avoid problems at the donor site, various allograft materials have been used as a substitute for autograft. However, there are still questions as to the comparative effectiveness and safety of cadaver allo...

A 26-year-old man who underwent anterior cervical fusion for a compressed fracture of the C5 vertebra developed postoperatively partial extrusion of the bone graft, followed by progressive dysphagia and retropharyngeal emphysema. Although no definite perforation of the oesophagus or pharynx was detected at reoperation, an extensive pharyngocutaneous fistula formed subsequently through the opera...

OBJECTIVE The maintenance of post-operative lordosis has been shown to be a key factor in decreasing adjacent level disc stress. Previous studies of the PEEK (polyether ketone) cage have used intervertebral bony fusion as the primary measure of surgical success; however, little is known about its effects on spinal curvature. Our objective was to compare the PEEK cage to the cervical plate with ...

Fibrous dysplasia (FD) was firstly reported by Lichtenstein in 1938 and can be divided into two main kinds of subtypes: monostotic fibrous dysplasia (MFD) and polyostotic fibrous dysplasia (PFD) with or without endocrinopathy. MFD involved in cervical vertebrae is extremely rare. Two special cases of MFD involved in cervical vertebrae were treated by anterior surgical resection and fusion with ...