Incidence of C5 nerve root palsy after cervical surgery: A meta-analysis for last decade

We aim to perform a meta-analysis on incidence of C5 nerve root palsy (C5 palsy) for patients after cervical surgery.

An extensive search of the literature was performed in PubMed/MEDLINE, Embase, the Cochrane library, CNKI, and WANFANG databases on incidence of C5 palsy from January 2007 to January 2017. Prevalence of C5 palsy related to different surgery methods was calculated and data analysis was conducted with STATA 12.0.

A total of 61 studies containing 721 patients with C5 palsy in total 11,481 patients (6.3%) were included in our study. The incidences after anterior cervical discectomy and fusion (ACDF), anterior cervical corpectomy and fusion (ACCF), anterior corpectomy combined with discectomy (ACCDF), laminoplasty (LP) and laminectomy and fusion (LF) were 5.5%, 7.5%, 6%, 4.4%, and 12.2%, respectively. Compared with anterior approaches (5%), female patients (4%) and patients with cervical spondylotic myelopathy (CSM) (4.8%), posterior approaches (6.2%), male patients (5.7%) and patients with ossification of posterior longitudinal ligament (OPLL) (8.1%) have a higher prevalence. In ACDF and LP, patients with OPLL (5.5%, 8.1%, respectively) have a higher incidence than those in patients with CSM (4.7%, 3.1%, respectively); however, in LF, patients with CSM and OPLL have similar incidence of C5 palsy (13% vs 13.1%). In most cases, C5 palsy was unilateral (74.5%).

Based on our meta-analysis, posterior approaches, male patients and patients with OPLL have a higher incidence of C5 palsy. In ACDF and LP, patients with OPLL have a higher incidence of C5 palsy, but in LF, patients with CSM and OPLL have similar result.