Cervical Deformity is a type of disorder that affects cervical alignment. This deformity can cause not only pain to a person and maintaining an upright position but, the cervical deformity can also result in difficulty swallowing and breathing, maintaining a straight gaze in severe cases, and can severely disrupt the person’s daily activities such as driving, eating and long sitting. Surgical treatment is often mandatory if the above symptoms are present.
What is a Cervical Deformity?
Cervical Deformity can be a debilitating condition influencing the cervical position of the head relative to the shoulders and chest. Mostly it is related to increased stress and anterior pressure in the spinal cord, and then, myelopathy happens. The usual causes of Cervical Deformity are :
Cervical deformities are mainly fallen in two categories Fixed( when the deformity is stubborn regardless of person’s position) and Reducible(when the deformity is flexible).
How do we treat cervical deformity?
Depending on the health of the patient and severity and type of deformity they will conduct spine surgery.
The surgeon will fuse multiple bones in the neck to enhance the alignment of the head. If it’s flexible then the surgeon will correct it with soft tissue release and instrumentation.
There are several surgical strategies available like – anterior-only, posterior-only, anterior-posterior, or posterior–anterior-posterior.
What is the recovery period for cervical deformity?
The recovery time for deformity correction is generally a day or two in the hospital after the procedure. So the surgeon can have an eye on the success of the procedure and check the progress of healing.
It can take several months for the patients before they can resume their daily tasks, although they can walk around easily after being discharged from the hospital.
What are the potential complications in cervical deformity?
Dysphagia is a common complication noticed in CD, which is generally a condition where the patient will have difficulty in swallowing or coughing and choking.