One-stage anterior cervical decompression and posterior stabilization. A study of one hundred patients with a minimum of two years of follow-up.

One hundred patients were managed with one-stage anterior decompression and posterior stabilization of the cervical spine. The underlying indication for the operation was cervical trauma in thirty-one patients; a neoplasm with a pathological fracture or an incomplete neurological deficit in fifty-five; and a miscellaneous condition, such as infection, rheumatoid arthritis, or cervical spondylotic myelopathy, in fourteen. The duration of follow-up ranged from twenty-four to 108 months (mean, thirty-two months) for the living patients. Sixteen patients had the procedure after the failure of an operation that had been performed elsewhere. The development of more biomechanically rigid cervical instrumentation did not obviate the need for a combined anterior and posterior approach. Twenty-six patients (26 per cent) had supplemental cervical instrumentation as part of the circumferential arthrodesis: seventeen had insertion of an anterior cervical plate and nine had insertion of a posterior facet plate. There were no iatrogenic neurological deficits. Of the seventy-five patients who had had a neurological deficit preoperatively, fifty-one improved one grade and six improved two grades according to the system of Frankel et al. Of the thirty-five patients who had not been able to walk preoperatively, twenty-one regained enough motor strength to walk postoperatively. Because the anterior and posterior procedures were performed during one session of general anesthesia, the prevalence of perioperative complications related to the airway was lower than that previously reported in the literature. No patient had an obstruction of the airway.