Clinical Evaluation of Salvage Surgery for Patients with Failed Anterior Cervical Surgery

ABSTRACT

Although anterior cervical fusion provides an excellent choice for variable cervical pathologic conditions. However the potential risk of complications involved with its use have been the reason for its being less then universally accepted. The authors experienced 10 cases(5.8%) of failed anterior cervical surgery among the total of 171 during the past 5 years. The patients in our series averaged 52.9 years of age(range 26-75), consisted of 9 men and 1 woman. The clinical presentations were nuchal pain(80%), radiculopathy(50%), myelopathy(10%) and dysphagia (10%). The causes of failed anterior cervical surgery included 6 hardware failures and 4 graft failures. Salvage procedures included 9 anterior approach and 1 posterior approach. The mean follow up period was 15 months. All patients had achieved solid bony fusion in addition to marked symtomatic improvements of 70%(in 7 cases). The results of our study indicates that in order to reduce the need for salvage operations, accurate diagnosis, skillful surgical techniques are necessary.