[Chronic cephalalgia as a sequela of rheumatic spondylarthritis of the cervical spine]

Deformity and instability of the cervical spine is quite frequently recordable from patients with chronic rheumatoid arthritis. More than 70 per cent of patients who had been suffering this rheumatoid disease for more than ten years with mutilating peripheral joint lesions exhibited radiologically visible and clinically recordable cervical spine disorders. Anterior atlanto-axial subluxation has proved to be the most common rheumatic deformity of the cervical spine and was found to cause severe, even intolerable occipito-cervical headache. The authors have obtained good results from posterior C1-C2 fusion operation on patients in whom headache had been invalidising and resistant to conservative treatment.