Spinal Disorders: Fundamentals of Diagnosis and Treatment Part 49. Spinal disorders are among the most common medical conditions with significant impact on health related quality of life, use of health care resources and socio-economic costs. Spinal surgery is still one of the fastest growing areas in clinical medicine. | Degenerative Disorders of the Cervical Spine Chapter 17 467 Persson LC Moritz U Brandt L et al. 1997 Cervical radiculopathy pain muscle weakness and sensory loss in patients with cervical radiculopathy treated with surgery physiotherapy or cervical collar. A prospective controlled study. Eur Spine J 6 256-66 In this prospective study on 81 patients with cervical spondylotic radiculopathy the authors found that a cervical collar physiotherapy or surgery were equally effective in the long term. However better short-term pain relief was noted for the surgically treated patients. Robinson RA Smith GW 1955 Anterolateral cervical disc removal and interbody fusion for cervical disc syndrome. Bull Johns Hopkins Hosp 96 223 Smith GW Robinson RA 1958 The treatment of certain cervical-spine disorders by anterior removal of the intervertebral disc and interbody fusion. J Bone Joint Surg Am 40-A 607-24 Cloward RB 1958 The anterior approach for removal of ruptured cervical disks. J Neu-rosurg 15 602 - 17 Classic articles on the technique of anterior cervical discectomy and fusion. Frykholm R 1951 Cervical nerve root compression resulting from disc degeneration and root-sleeve fibrosis. A clinical investigation. Acta Orthop Scand Suppl 160 1 -149 Classic article on the techniques of posterior foraminotomy. Bohlman HH Emery SE Goodfellow DB Jones PK 1993 Robinson anterior cervical discectomy and arthrodesis for cervical radiculopathy. Long-term follow-up of one hundred and twenty-two patients. J Bone Joint Surg Am 75-A 1298-1307 In this classic case series Bohlman et al. demonstratedthat the fusion results of ACDF are critically dependent on the amount of levels fused. The fusion rates for one two and multilevel fusions were 89 73 and 67 respectively. Savolainen S Rinne J Hernesniemi J 1998 A prospective randomized study of anterior single-level cervical disc operations with long-term follow-up surgical fusion is unnecessary. Neurosurgery 43 51-5 In this RCT the authors .
