• Evangelos Sakellariou, Ioannis S Benetos, Dimitrios-Stergios Evangelopoulos, Athanasios Galanis, Fani Alevrogianni, Michail Vavourakis, Vasilios Marougklianis, Georgios Tsalimas, and Spiros Pneumaticos.
• 3rd Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, National & Kapodistrian University of Athens, KAT General Hospital, Athens, Greece.
• Medicine (Baltimore). 2023 Sep 15; 102 (37): e34653e34653.

AbstractSpinal cord injuries at the cervical spine level represent the most consequential of the related injuries at all levels of the spine. They can trigger permanent unilateral or bilateral damage with conspicuous disability. Regarding unstable injuries, the gold standard approach is open reduction and osteosynthesis, which can select between anterior and posterior surgical access. Each of the aforementioned approaches demonstrates both advantages and disadvantages; thus, it is up to the surgeon to determine the optimal option concerning the patient's safety. Diligent intraoperative control of anatomical reduction is pivotal to obtaining the best feasible postoperative outcomes. Literature data delineate copious complications following surgical intervention in the cervical spine. Indubitably, the most crucial intraoperative complication accounts for vascular injuries, with the most preponderant being the corrosion of the vertebral artery, as it is potentially life-threatening. This paper aims to provide a succinct and compendious review of the existing literature regarding cervical spinal cord injuries and to deduce many inferences concerning the incidence of iatrogenic vertebral artery injuries in relation to the surgical approach for fracture reduction.Copyright © 2023 the Author(s). Published by Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc.

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