ABSTRACT
Objective To compare the incidence of secondary surgical procedures after cervical disc arthroplasty vs anterior cervical discectomy with fusion in patients treated for symptomatic single level cervical spondylosis.Methods An online search of Pubmed, Medline, Ovid, Embase, Cochrane Library, CBM database, Wanfang data and VIP database were searched for prospective randomized controlled trial of cervical disc arthroplasty versus anterior cervical discectomy with fusion in incidence of secondary surgical procedures.Data were collected and extracted by two reviewers independently.Risk of bias was assessed using the criteria of Cochrane Reviews Handbook 5.1.0.Review Manager 5.2 software system was used to evaluate the data for Meta analysis.Results A total of 12 trials were included.Six of them were short-term follow up (two years).The 6 other trials were mid-and long-term follow up (mean 5.8 years).There are 4 trials with low risk of bias, 7 trials with moderate risk of bias, and 1 trial with high risk of bias.The results of meta-analysis showed there was no statistical difference in reoperation rate of adjacent level between the two groups at two years follow-up;however, the reoperation rate of non-fusion group was significantly lower in the non-fusion group compared with fusion group at mid-and long-term follow-up.The incidence of secondary surgical procedures at index level was higher in fusion group than in non-fusion group.No statistical difference was found between the two groups in using ‘ removal’ for secondary surgical procedure at two years follow-up;however, the rate of non-fusion group was significantly lower than fusion group at mid-and long-term follow-up.Conclusion Cervical disc arthroplasty was partly superior to anterior cervical discectomy with fusion in avoiding secondary surgical procedures of adjacent levels.However, non-fusion surgery doesn't have any advantages in short time (two years) follow up.Reducing the incidence of pseudarthrosis was an effective way to decrease the incidence of secondary surgery procedures in index level.
ABSTRACT
ObjectiveTo compare the incidence of C5 nerve palsy after laminoplasty and laminectomy with internal fixation for treating multilevel cervical spondylotic myelopathy (MCSM).MethodsFrom January 2005 to June 2010,68 patients with MCSM were treated with laminoplasty (27 patients,group A) or laminectomy with internal fixation(41 patients,group B).There were 21 males and 6 females in group A,aged 33-80 years(average,60.4 years),31 males and 10 females in group B,aged 22-77 years (average,58.7 years).All the patients were followed up for 12-48 months (average,22 months).In both groups,Cobb's method was applied to measure cervical lordotic angle,and Ishihara's method was conducted to measure cervical curvature index(CCI) before and after operation.The incidence of C5 nerve palsy was recorded and compared.Then we further compared preoperative and postoperative the cervical lordosis angle and CCI of 9 patients with C5 nerve palsy (group B1) and 32 patients without C5 nerve palsy (group B2) in group B.ResultsThe incidence of C5 nerve palsy in group A was 3.7％(1/27),while 22.0％(9/41) in group B (x2=4.32,P＜0.05).For all ten patients with C5 nerve palsy,the muscle strengths of paralyzed muscles were recovered to grade 4 or better after being treated with conservative treatment for an average of 14 months.The change rate of preoperative and postoperative CCI in group B1 was 38.07％±18.03％,while 22.81％±12.71％ in group B2.There was a statistical difference between group B1 and group B2 (t=2.88,P＜0.05).Conclusion Compared with laminoplasty,laminectomy with internal fixation has a higher incidence of C5 nerve palsy.The C5 nerve palsy may be associated with postoperative increase of cervical lordosis angle.Moreover,tethering of the C5 root may be one of its important pathomechanisms.