• Neurosurgery · Aug 2023

    Congenitally Fused Cervical Spine Is Associated With Adjacent-Level Degeneration in the Absence of Cervical Spine Surgery.

    • Gabriel N Friedman, Benjamin L Grannan, Aniket Zinzuwadia, Ziv M Williams, and Jean-Valery Coumans.
    • Department of Neurosurgery, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
    • Neurosurgery. 2023 Aug 1; 93 (2): 409418409-418.

    BackgroundCervical fusion surgery is associated with adjacent-level degeneration, but surgical and technical factors are difficult to dissociate from the mechanical effects of the fusion itself.ObjectiveTo determine the effect of fusion on adjacent-level degeneration in unoperated patients using a cohort of patients with congenitally fused cervical vertebrae.MethodsWe identified 96 patients with incidental single-level cervical congenital fusion on computed tomography imaging. We compared these patients to an age-matched control cohort of 80 patients without congenital fusion. We quantified adjacent-level degeneration through direct measurements of intervertebral disk parameters as well as the validated Kellgren & Lawrence classification scale for cervical disk degeneration. Ordinal logistic regression and 2-way analysis of variance testing were performed to correlate extent of degeneration with the congenitally fused segment.ResultsNine hundred fifty-five motion segments were analyzed. The numbers of patients with C2-3, C3-4, C4-5, C5-6, and C6-7 congenitally fused segments were 47, 11, 11, 17, and 9, respectively. We found that patients with congenital fusion at C4-C5 and C5-C6 had a significantly greater extent of degeneration at adjacent levels compared with the degree of degeneration at the same levels in control patients and in patients with congenital fusion at other cervical levels, even while controlling for expected degeneration and age.ConclusionTaken together, our data suggest that congenitally fused cervical spinal segments at C4-C5 and C5-C6 are associated with adjacent-level degeneration independent of fixation instrumentation. This study design removes surgical factors that might contribute to adjacent-level degeneration.Copyright © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. on behalf of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons.

      Pubmed     Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…