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Specific intraoperative alignment goals benefit patients with severe cervical deformity
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CHICAGO — Surgical outcomes and improved health-related quality of life scores can be achieved at 1 year postoperatively when patients with more severe cervical deformity alignment are managed with surgical plans that take their unique spinal parameters into account, a presenter said at the North American Spine Society Annual Meeting.
Sohrab Virk, MD, and his colleagues at Hospital for Special Surgery in New York identified the three groups of more severe morphotypes of cervical deformity that need to be managed differently to be patients with cervicothoracic, flat neck and focal or kyphotic deformity.
Among an original group of 153 patients with cervical deformity that they studied, 83 patients met criteria for a severe deformity pattern and 40 patients had HRQoL results that could be analyzed, Virk said.
“We used various statistical tools to compare those who did well vs. those who did meet our criteria for good outcomes,” Virk said, noting they used those results to determine some distinct deformity-specific goals that would benefit patients in each group.
“The results in this study show that each patient with cervical deformity likely requires its own set of parameters in order to get to the best, optimal HRQoLs. This further sort of emphasizes previous findings that sagittal morphotype of cervical deformity is important when you preop[eratively] plan these patients,” Virk said.
“Breaking down for those three subcategories again, obtaining proper global or regional cervical alignment in cervicothoracic patients, correcting maximal focal kyphosis in those patients with focal deformity and, finally, getting patients with flat neck deformity to a proper horizontal gaze, is important,” he said. – by Susan M. Rapp
Reference:
Virk S, et al. Abstract 175. Presented at: North American Spine Society Annual Meeting; Sept. 25-28, 2019; Chicago.
Disclosure: Virk reports no relevant financial disclosures.