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Cervical Disc Surgery Complications

Cervical spine surgery is indicated for patients who experience a degenerative disc disease, such as arthritis or a herniated disc, or have a deformity in their spine that makes the spine crooked. When patients experience traumatic symptoms, such as pain, numbness, tingling, weakness and nerve loss, cervical spine surgery may be considered.

As with many surgical procedures, especially those that operate on the delicate spine, risks and rewards are associated with cervical disc surgery.

  1. How It Works

    • In its most basic form, cervical disc surgery involves removing a diseased portion of disc or bone and fusing the remaining vertebrae together with a bone graft. This graft may be taken from the body or utilized from a bone bank.

      Fusing the vertebrae together helps to stabilize the spine, and additional screw, pins or plates can be added to provide further structure. The removal of the diseased disc portion helps to eliminate painful symptoms.

    Injury

    • Disturbing the sensitive spinal canal can have serious effects both to the spine itself as well as to surrounding nerve and other tissues. Surgical complications can result in damage to the spinal cord, nerves, esophagus, carotid artery or even the vocal cords. According to Spine-Health.com, damage to the esophagus or trachea occurs in only 1 out of 1,000 cases and injuries to the nerve root or spinal cord occur in 1 in 10,000 patients.

    Non-Healing

    • While the presence of a bone graft allows a patient to retain more normal range of motion, sometimes the area where the bones are fused together rejects the bone graft, causing the area to become less strong and not heal properly. When this occurs, symptoms may not improve because the spine is weakened.

    Breakage or Failure

    • Because cervical disc surgery frequently requires the implantation of plates, pins or screws into the spinal column, these instruments can sometimes break or loosen, which results in pain or does not improve the patient's symptoms. In these instances, the surgeon will most often recommend a surgical revision, which requires re-entry into the surgical site in order to correct the faulty equipment or placement of the instruments.

    Infection

    • Any time an incision is involved, the possibility for surgical site infection occurs. While the patient's site is healing, bacteria can invade the wound and cause trouble healing, swelling, redness, warmth or oozing pus at the site. If any of these conditions occur, a doctor may prescribe an antibiotic to treat the infection and recommend wound care treatments, such as antibiotic ointment and bandaging, to heal the existing surgical site.

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