-Report on Experiments and Clinical Cases-

Technical Arrangement of the Williams-Isu Method for Anterior Cervical Discectomy and Fusion

Kazunari Kogure^1,2, Toyohiko Isu⁵, Yoji Node^1,2, Tomonori Tamaki^1,2, Kyongsong Kim^1,3, Daijiro Morimoto^1,4 and Akio Morita^1,4

¹Department of Neurosurgery, Graduate School of Medicine, Nippon Medical School
²Department of Neurosurgery, Nippon Medical School Tama Nagayama Hospital
³Department of Neurosurgery, Nippon Medical School Chiba Hokuso Hospital
⁴Department of Neurosurgery, Nippon Medical School
⁵Department of Neurosurgery, Kushiro Rosai Hospital

Anterior cervical fixation with autologous bone transplantation -without the need for harvesting bone from other sites, such as the ilium- was developed by Williams and modified by Isu et al. In recent intervertebral fusion procedures, after harvesting the cuboid bone from vertebral bodies, a hydroxyapatite block is placed between two harvested vertebral bones in the same way as in the sandwich method for intervertebral fixation. According to previous studies, this procedure has the following disadvantages: (i) as the corrective force for cervical kyphosis is insufficient, it could not be adapted for patients with preoperative kyphosis; (ii) special devices, including a microsurgical saw, are required for harvesting vertebral bones. In our modified method, we used a conventional high-speed drill instead of a microsurgical saw. Nevertheless, the results show that the operated spine can be stabilized to a greater extent by decreasing the height of the grafted bone, and this might help in reducing postoperative kyphosis.

J Nippon Med Sch 2015; 82: 50-53

Keywords
anterior cervical fusion and discectomy, Williams-Isu method, sandwich method, technical arrangement

Correspondence to
Kazunari Kogure, MD, Department of Neurosurgery, Nippon Medical School Tama Nagayama Hospital, 1-7-1 Nagayama, Tama, Tokyo 206-8512, Japan
kaz-kog@nms.ac.jp

Received, November 14, 2014
Accepted, February 16, 2015