Heterotopic ossification and clinical outcome in nonconstrained cervical arthroplasty

Anterior cervical discectomy and fusion (ACDF) has long been accepted as a gold standard surgical treatment for patients with cervical spondylotic radiculopathy. On the other hand, many recent studies have pointed that cervical disc arthroplasty (CDA) was superior to ACDF in terms of maintaining the range of motion (ROM) and preventing the adjacent segment degeneration (ASD) (1-3). It seems quite obvious that CDA can provide better, at least non-inferior, clinical outcome than ACDF because of the preservation of ROM at index segment by reproducing similar kinematics to normal condition (4).