Surgical treatment of cervical chronic disc herniation (anterior approach). Prognostic factors

We report a retrospective study of 43 patients with spondylotic cervical herniated disc, treated surgically by the anterior approach with bone grafting. Our re,suits which were achieved according to Odomo's Criteria were excellent in 65% of the cases, Good in 27%, Fair in 4.6% and Poor in 2.3%. For detection of possible prognostic factors we correlated our results with the age, the clinical course, and the initial neurological stage. We found that a lower age (<40 years) and a shorter duration of the illness (<2 years) were positive prognostic factors. We found that patients who initially had radicular type deficit showed more dramatic improvment postoperativly than those with pyramidal and or mixed type of deficit.