Articles & Issues

A brief review of the conflicting desires of a medical profession's desire to be relieved of the burden of malpractice litigation in the context of the constitutional framework of the American legal s...

Evidence-based approaches to the treatment of spinal pathology are needed as the field evolves. Patient-reported outcomes have become the standard by which therapeutic success is defined. There are 4 ...

Knowledge regarding the in vivo performance and periprosthetic tissue response of cervical and lumbar total disc replacements (TDRs) continues to expand. This review addresses the following 4 main que...

The growing list of total disc replacements attempts to give options and variability to surgeons while treating degenerative disc disease. However, despite surgeon and patient interest, their path to ...

Anterior cervical diskectomy and fusion is one of the most commonly performed cervical spine procedures with historically excellent results. In an effort to preserve segmental motion and prevent adjac...

ProDisc-C cervical disc arthroplasty is a prosthesis that has a cobalt chrome/polyethylene bearing surface and is semi-constrained. It was developed based on the design of the ProDisc-L lumbar disc ar...

Nucleus replacement devices have been developed with the goal of treating moderate forms of degenerative disk disease, trying to fill the gap between discectomy and fusion. This is a retrospective ana...

Cervical and lumbar arthroplasty is being increasingly used over the past decade for the management of degenerative spinal disease with multiple varied devices available worldwide. As more experience ...

This article provides a general understanding of the fundamental differences between the Canadian and United States health care systems and how they may relate to spine care. Issues regarding sustaina...

Advancements in lumbar total disk replacement (TDR) and motion preserving technology have become more prevalent. With the clinical application of these devices, complications and failures will need to...

Defining value in spine surgery increasingly considers the patient's perspective, a task that requires quantifying outcomes using validated, patient-derived outcome instruments. Both general and disea...

It is an honor to be the Guest Editor for this issue of Seminars in Spine Surgery with the theme of “Social and Legal Ramifications of Spine Care.” We have assembled a stellar group of authors with sp...

Lumbar total disk replacement (TDR) has been used in Europe for many years and since 2000 in the United States with the initiation of the Food and Drug Administration investigational device exemption ...

Ideally, each patient should be provided with accurate information on outcome and cost and select care based on the best value and personal care preferences. Unfortunately, useful information on outco...

Lumbar total disk replacement (TDR) has been used for the treatment of painful disk degeneration since the 1980s. Not until the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulated trials in the United States...

Challenges abound in our quest to define the “Social and Legal Ramifications of Spine Care.” These challenges exist not only in regards the present-day practice of spinal surgery but particularly with...

Cervical arthroplasty was developed and is used to preserve segmental motion of the cervical spine for selected patients who require cervical diskectomy. There are now 3 cervical arthroplasty devices ...

In this era of constrained resources, spine care professionals are challenged to provide value and justification of resource allocation. For surgeons, this requires demonstration of clinical superiori...

A review of the literature was performed to study the complications of cervical disk arthroplasty. The following early postoperative complications will be discussed in this article: persistent neurolo...