Anterior decompression techniques in cervical myelopathy

Abstract

The pathophysiology of cervical myelopathy is multifactorial with both static factors causing stenosis and dynamic factors resulting in repetitive injury to the spinal cord. The symptoms are related directly to the degree of compression of the various spinal cord tracts. The use of instruments set for anterior cervical techniques are unique, cervical retractors, Dural hook, high speed burr, cervical distractors, cage, anterior cervical plate of various sizes, variable/ fixed angle giudes for drilling with their respective screws has to be present to complement the standard cervical spine instrumentation set. We compared the two functional scores preoperatively and pre-operatively in our 40 patients and found that the Nurick as well as the JOA score at both 6 weeks and 12 weeks showed a significant improvement which was statistically significant.