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[Radiculopathy after cervical laminectomy].

OBJECTIVE
To investigate radiculopathy after multilevel laminectomy in patients with cervical compression myelopathy and underlying mechanism.


METHODS
We retrospectively reviewed 287 consecutive patients with cervical compression myelopathy treated by multilevel cervical laminectomy and identified 37 patients (12.9%) with postoperative radiculopathy. There were 27 men and 10 women, with an average age of 56 years at time of surgery. The diagnosis was either cervical spondylosis (25 patients) or ossification of the posterior longitudinal ligament (12 patients).


RESULTS
Radiculopathy was observed from 4 hours to 6 days after surgery. The most frequent patterns of paralysis were C(5) and C(6) root involvements of the motor-dominant type. All patients showed complete recovery in 2 weeks to 3 years (average, 5.4 months). Follow up results showed that the recovery rate was negatively related to the duration of complete recovery of postoperative radiculopathy (r = -0.832, P < 0.01) and the patients with spondylotic myelopathy had a significantly better clinical recovery rate than those with ossification of the posterior longitudinal ligament (t = 2.960, P < 0.01).


CONCLUSIONS
Postoperative radiculopathy is complicated with posterior cervical decompression and associated with tethering effect upon the nerve root. More logical procedures for prevention of postoperative radiculopathy are decompression through an anterior decompressive procedure in conjunction with a spinal fusion, which may achieve stabilization and directly remove all of the anterior spinal cord compression at multiple levels.