Posterior Dynamic/Semi-Rigid Stabilization as an Effective Treatment for Cervical Spinal Stenosis

To investigate the short- term results of dynamic/semi-rigid stabilization in patients with cervical spinal stenosis and compare them with patients for which decompression and pos-terior cervical fusion was performed.

28 patients were included in this study. Group 1 was the semi-rigid group (four male, ten female), group 2 was the fusion group (nine male, five female). We compared the clinical status of the patients pre-operatively, first and twelfth month post-operatively using the Visual Analog Scale (VAS) and Neck Disability Index (NDI). Also radiologically, the pre-operative and on the postoperative first and twelfth month, cervical sagittal vertical axis (cSVA), cervical lordosis (C0-2) (C2-7) and T1 slope were measured.

Our results showed that there was a significant improvement on the VAS and NDI score after semi-rigid and fusion surgery (p < 0.001). Also the cervical lordosis was obtained in both groups (p=0.033). Although, no significant differences was found between both groups regarding the change of variables over time between post-operative first and twelfth month.

Although, posterior dynamic stabilization has been previously used in thoracic and lumbar pathologies before, there is no crucial evidence about their effects in cervical stenosis. This study states, that semi-rigid instrumentation is as effective in clinical and radiologic out-comes as posterior fusion surgery in periods of one year. Also, the lower risk of adjacent-segment disease and pseudoarthrosis and preservation of cervical sagittal alignment are the main advantages of the new method.