A group of researchers published an article in The Spine Journal examines adjacent segment pathology for patients after anterior cervical discectomy and fusion with a minimum of 10 year follow-ups.
The study included 177 patients who underwent ACDF using cervical plates and found radiographic and clinical adjacent-segment pathology was identified in 92.1 percent and 19.2 percent of patients respectively. The researchers observed that pathology in 13.5 percent of patients who had sustained trauma, 33.3 percent of patients with spondylolsis and 22.2 percent of those with disc herniation.
The researchers found the adjacent-segment pathology among 13.2 percent of patients who underwent single-level fusions and 32.1 percent of patients who had multilevel fusion surgeries. The patients who underwent multilevel fusion had higher incidence of adjacent-segment pathology after ACDF with cervical plates than other groups.
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