Methods: Skeletal traction with skull tongs was applied in 24 patients who had fracture-dislocations prior to surgery. Anterior interbody fusion was performed in 13 patients using iliac autograft (Group 0, and additional plating in 24 patients (Group II) for stabilisation of cervical spine after corpectomy. The patients were scored neurologically according to the functional grading scale of Benzel and Larson in order to assess the existence of correlation between timing of surgery and functional recovery during the follow-up.

Results: The success of reduction was 75 %. Four patients (l0.81 %) died postoperatively. Of 29 out of remaining 33 patients with complete and incomplete deficit, 23 (79.31 %) showed at least one grade of functional recovery. There was no significant correlation between timing surgery and functional recovery (p>0.05). Among patients of group I, a total of 5 patients developed complications; three (23.07%) underwent revision surgery for early anterior graft dislodgement, while 2 (15.38%) developed an anterior kyfotic deformity. No such complication was observed in the patients of group II, which did differ significantly when compared to group I (p<0.05).

Conclusions: It seems that anterior cervical corpectomy, when combined with plate and bone fusion, is appropriate for decompressive surgery in selected patients in the treatment of cervical spine fractures and fracturedislocations. Keywords : Anterior fusion, Cervical spine trauma, Corpectomy, Fracture-dislocation, Instrumentation