A meta-analysis was performed to compare cervical arthroplasty with anterior cervical diskectomy and fusion for single-level cervical spondylosis. A comprehensive search was conducted with PubMed, Embase, and the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials from January 1, 2000, to April 30, 2015. Random-effects models were used for heterogeneous data. Fixed-effects models were used for poole...

MR imaging after IV gadolinium-DTPA administration has demonstrated contrast enhancement in traumatized lumbar intervertebral disks. To characterize the morbid anatomy that correlates with the contrast enhancement, we developed a canine model of traumatized intervertebral disks. Diskectomy was performed with a nucleotome and the spines were imaged biweekly with MR and Gd-DTPA. The spines were s...

Between January 1996 and December 2005, a total of 1241 patients underwent anterior cervical decompression and fusion for cervical degenerative diseases in the authors' institution. Sixty-three (5.1%) patients underwent revision anterior cervical diskectomy and fusion for adjacent segment disease between October 2003 and August 2010. This series included 35 men and 28 women with a mean±SD age o...

CONTEXT For patients with lumbar disk herniation, the Spine Patient Outcomes Research Trial (SPORT) randomized trial intent-to-treat analysis showed small but not statistically significant differences in favor of diskectomy compared with usual care. However, the large numbers of patients who crossed over between assigned groups precluded any conclusions about the comparative effectiveness of op...

STUDY DESIGN  Systematic review and meta-analysis. OBJECTIVE Anterior cervical diskectomy and fusion (ACDF) is an effective surgical option for patients with cervical radiculopathy, myelopathy, or deformity. Although ACDF is generally safe, dysphagia is a common complication. Despite its high incidence, prolonged postoperative dysphagia is poorly understood; its etiology remains relatively un...

A robust method to segment intervertebral disks and spinal canal in magnetic resonance images is required as part of a precise 3D reconstruction for computer assistance during diskectomy procedure with minimally invasive surgery approach. In this paper, an unsupervised segmentation technique for intervertebral disks and spinal canal from MRI data is presented. The proposed scheme uses a watersh...