Laminectomy Alone Versus Laminectomy and Fusion for Traumatic Cervical Spinal Cord Injury Without Instability

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Cervical spinal cord injury (CSCI) without instability tends to be caused by a hyperextension force to the neck. This type of injury has been increasing as the elderly population is dramatically increasing. Although surgery has become the preferred method for management of traumatic unstable cervical spine injury, the treatment of spinal cord injury (SCI) without instability such as fracture, dislocation, and ligamentous injury, however, remains controversial. Before deciding for surgical or conservative treatment, one should understand the pathophysiology of SCI. Traumatic SCI is dependent on primary damage, such as the dynamic mechanistic force and static pre-existing or concurrent cord compression, and secondary damage, such as edema, ischemia, and inflammation, which lead to demyelination of axons, apoptosis of neural cells, and glial scar formation in the spinal cord. Advocates of conservative treatment believe that decompression is not effective here, because the compression may have existed before the injury in asymptomatic patients. Therefore, the symptoms develop after a CSCI without instability are probably not a result of the compression itself. On the other hands advocates of surgical treatment believe that decompression could prevent secondary cord damage due to the vicious cycle of "ischemia-edema-ischemia". However, faced with a patient with neurologic dysfunction MRI evidence of cervical spinal cord compression, decompressive surgery is a practical treatment option. Since these injuries are stable, why to add fusion to laminectomy when it is possible to perform laminectomy only with expected less operative time, blood loss and restriction of neck motion (compared to laminectomy with fusion). Instrumented fusions also entail the risks of screw misplacement, pseudoarthrosis, distal junction kyphosis, and adjacent segment pathology. Multi-level laminectomy compromises the posterior tension band and increases the mobility of the neck, resulting in post laminectomy kyphosis and potential dynamic injury to the spinal cord . In contrast, spinal instrumentation and fusion helps to eliminate movement at the treated levels and reduce spinal cord tension with less incidence of kyphosis.