Cervical spine surgery
- Minimally invasive
- Motion preserving
- Open procedures
From the back, usually through a tube the width of a dime. Opens the tunnel the nerve root leaves through and lifts the pressure off it — without removing the disc, and without fusing anything. The smallest of the three.
Read the full procedure →Anterior cervical discectomy and fusion. The worn disc comes out from the front, which lifts the pressure off the nerve directly, and a spacer holds the height while the two vertebrae grow together. The operation most one- and two-level problems are solved with.
Read the full procedure →The same front approach and the same decompression — but instead of fusing the level, the disc is replaced with a device that keeps it moving. Candidacy is narrower than for an ACDF and is settled on your imaging rather than on preference.
Read the full procedure →Cervical radiculopathy
A disc or a bone spur presses on one nerve where it leaves the neck, and the pain runs out along that nerve into the shoulder, arm or hand — usually with pins and needles or weakness in a pattern that maps to a single level. It is the commonest reason to operate on a neck, and most cases settle without an operation at all.
↑ Treated by the three operations above
Cervical stenosis and myelopathy
The canal itself narrows and the cord is squeezed rather than a single root. It shows up as clumsy hands, trouble with buttons or handwriting, and an unsteady walk more often than as neck pain — and because the cord does not recover the way a nerve root does, the timing of treatment matters more here than anywhere else on this page.
↓ Treated by the two operations below
The roof of the canal is hinged open rather than cut away, so the cord gets room across several levels and nothing is fused. It needs a neck that still has its lordosis — that prerequisite is not a preference, and it is what rules most kyphotic necks out.
Read the full procedure →Lateral mass screws and rods from behind, usually across several levels. The answer when the compression runs most of the length of the neck, when the alignment itself has to be corrected, or when a previous fusion needs supporting.
Read the full procedure →This is the fork the five operations above divide on.
Two of the five operations above preserve motion rather than removing it. Where the anatomy allows it, keeping a level moving spares the discs above and below some of the extra work a fusion hands them — and where the anatomy does not allow it, a fusion is the operation that works, and the honest answer is that most people asking about a disc replacement will be better served by an ACDF.
The index lists every procedure in one place; the approach page explains how the choice between a tube and an open exposure actually gets made, and the conditions list names what comes through the clinic most often.