When people aged, the spinal canal maybe degeneratively changed and will get tightened. If this occur in a long time, a tight spinal canal will result in the pinching of nerve roots and spinal cord. Beside causing pain, this spinal cord pinching can also cause severe miss coordination of body parts.
It is a very dangerous health issue and you should treat it immediately and carefully. If you consult your doctors, they will advise you to go through either dicectomy or laminectomy, but in this article we mainly talk only about posterior cervical laminectomy and fusion.
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Discectomy or the removal of the spinal disc is a good way to treat the pinching of spinal cord. But it only a good option if the spinal disc can be easily removed. When the spinal disc which herniated is hidden beneath the spinal bones or anything that makes your doctors considered a normal discectomy is hard to procede, they will choose to do laminectomy.
Laminectomy is a process to remove the spinal disc by first cutting a small section of your spinal bones that cover the spinal disc which called lamina from the back. The one side of the lamina is cut completely while the other side will only get partially cut to make it like a door that can swing. Later the lamina is held open and the spinal disc will get decompressed. This is the main part of posterior cervical laminectomy and fusion.
The decompression of the spinal disc will result in the decrease of pain that is felt by the patient. The spinal disc can either be completely removed or partially removed. In partial removal, only a part of the disc that press nerve system and spinal cord which will be removed.
Partial removal will need a lesser time of bed rest for the patient. But the disadvantages is that partial removal in posterior cervical laminectomy and fusion procedure is probable enough to cause the same problem in the future as your spinal disc may get narrow again and press your spinal cord again.
To prevent this from happening, a fusion process will be done. A fusion process is the process to insert screws and rods in between the spinal bones to stabilize the neck. A small bone graft also inserted in the same space to fill the cavity that is left when the spinal disc is extracted. And by this process, posterior cervical laminectomy and fusion procedure is finished.
