Indications and techniques for anterior cervical plating.

Overview

Anterior cervical plating is commonly performed to stabilize anterior cervical fusions. Modern plating options include dynamic plates, with screws that can either toggle within fixed holes or translate within slotted holes. Regardless of the plating system used, paramount to success and avoidance of complications with plated anterior cervical fusions are meticulous plating techniques, exacting graft carpentry, and understanding the biomechanical limitations of plating in certain situations, such as multilevel corpectomies reconstructed with a single-strut graft. In order to prevent graft-related complications associated with long-strut grafts, additional posterior fixation and fusion, or alternative corpectomy constructs, such as multilevel anterior cervical discectomy and fusion, corpectomy-discectomy, and corpectomy-corpectomy, should be considered instead if the pattern of stenosis allows.