Cervical Artificial Disc Replacement | Dr. Todd Lanman

Artificial disc replacement surgery has been around for nearly 30 years, introduced in Europe back in the 1980s. The procedure was first approved by the FDA in 2005 with subsequent approvals for additional procedures.

Artificial disc replacement was approved by the FDA in 2005 for lumbar applications and in 2007 for cervical. ADR it is a significant surgical alternative to the decades' old method of spinal fusion, introduced in 1950. Moreover, I was with a group of physicians that studied patient outcomes for 10 years. The study involved about 400 patients. About half of the patients underwent two-level cervical disc replacement, and the remainder were treated with anterior cervical discectomy and fusion (ACDF). The focus of our study was to measure overall success based on some clinical criteria, namely pain complaint, post-operative revisions, flexibility and movement, and other factors.
 
Of those who were disc replacement patients, the success rate was 81.4%. Of those who underwent fusion, the success rate was 69.4%. An additional part of the study noted that ADR patients were half as likely than fusion to develop problems with adjacent disc failure.