Pediatric cervical spine instrumentation using screw fixation

From July 1986 to August 1993 we performed 24 pediatric cervical spine screw fixation procedures on 23 patients 16 years of age or less. The types of cervical instrumentation procedures performed were as follows: anterior cervical plates 12, posterior C1-2 screw fixations 8, posterior lateral mass plates 2, odontoid screw fixations 2. The mean age of all patients was 14.2 years (range 6-16). Indications for operation included traumatic instability in 20 cases, congenital instability in 1 case, 2 cases of postoperative swan neck deformity, and one reoperation for early graft and hardware failure. Six of the 23 patients had persistent instability following previous failed fusions (3 with 1 prior surgery, 2 with 2 prior surgeries, and 1 with 3 prior surgeries). Eight patients had improvement of their neurological status following operation and 15 remained at their preoperative level of neurological function. No patient was worse neurologically after their procedure. There were no long-term instrumentation, graft or fusion failures. Two complications occurred. One was the aforementioned graft and hardware failure requiring reoperation, the other was a superficial wound infection treated successfully with antibiotics. We feel that cervical spine fixation techniques have increased our ability to stabilize the pediatric cervical spine and have proven to be safe and effective.