Abstract
Cervical ossification of posterior longitudinal ligament (OPLL) is common in peopleover 50 years old. It can lead to compression myelopathy, which may end in paralysis when it's severe enough. It has quite a high prevalence in Asian, espe-cially in Japan-cohort, while lower in other districts or races relatively. There have been many surgical methods aiming at cervical OPLL and all of them show satisfied short-term efficacy. However, there hasn't been a comprehensive discussion about disease evo-lution in natural circumstances as well as its long-term prognosis up till now, which means that clinicians haven’t got direct under-standing. In that case it does make sense to ensure patients' natural progression and long-term post-surgical prognosis, from which summarized their rules in different cases with cervical OPLL. It is possible to analyze the long-term prognosis and provide sugges-tions to clinicians, with collection of papers about cervical OPLL's progression after conservative or surgical treatment and sum-ming up cervical OPLL's radiological and clinical course either in natural circumstance or after surgical intervention.According to the review, ossified sites' axial length grows about 2 mm per year, while its thickness grows 0.2 mm per year. Young age and ossi-fied sites of continuous/mixed types are its risk factors. Compared with natural course, laminectomy with fusion and all kinds of an-terior approaches can inhibit ossification site's progression, while laminectomy and laminoplasty will speed it up. Young age and continuous/mixed type still contribute to the post-surgical progress of ossification sites. Symptoms of spinal cord are partly deter-mined by the worsen of ossified site, which in the meantime is related to rate of occupation, range of motion, age and trauma histo-ry. Current surgical approaches are all able to eliminate symptoms, though anterior approaches undertake more intraoperative com-plications as well as better long-term prognosis than posterior ones.
Published Version
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