Treatment of geriatric odontoid fractures

The treatment of odontoid fractures in geriatric patients, particularly type II fractures, remains controversial. In biologically young patients, studies suggest advantages of surgical treatment in terms of mortality; however, this advantage is not observed in geriatric patients. While the mortality appears to be higher after conservative treatment in patients aged 65-80 years, there are studies that have shown no differences in mortality for patients aged 80 years or older and even showed advantages of conservative treatment in this age group. The complication rates of both surgical and conservative approaches are comparable. Although conservative treatment is associated with a higher rate of pseudarthrosis, healing in a "rigid" pseudarthrosis is associated with a good clinical outcome and can therefore be considered a treatment success. The central problem with the currently available literature, including the present prospective but nonrandomized data, is selection bias, which significantly limits the comparability of the patient cohorts. So far, no clear superiority of either treatment method has been demonstrated. Therefore, conservative treatment retains its importance in the geriatric patient population and the majority of these patients achieve a very good functional outcome with conservative treatment.