[Advances in the diagnosis and treatment of craniovertebral junction abnormalities]

Craniocervical junction zone malformations often have an insidious onset, a variety of clinical phenotypes, and are often combined with multiple malformations, making their systematic classification and staging more difficult.At present, craniocervical junction area malformations are often classified into congenital and acquired, and can also be classified into skull base malformations, atlantoaxial malformations, and cardinal malformations according to their locations. For patients with obvious occipitocervical or atlantoaxial instability, combined with symptoms of high cervical spinal cord damage, internal fixation and fusion surgery should be performed aggressively to avoid irreversible nerve damage.There is a lack of detailed categorisation and summary of the treatment of diseases associated with craniocervical junction malformations in the literature, and the treatment strategies for some of these malformations are still controversial, with different perceptions and treatment concepts in the national and international literature.