MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr. Samuel Cho, MD Associate Professor of Orthopaedics Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai   MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Anterior cervical discectomy and fusion (ACDF), first implemented in 1957, has been considered the “gold standard” for decades for the treatment of cervical degenerative disc disease after conservative options have been exhausted. For patients presenting with neck and radiating arm pain, motor weakness, and sensory loss due to cervical disc herniation or compressive pathologies, ACDF has been shown to be generally well-tolerated and associated with a high clinical success rate. Despite the proven long-term radiographic and clinical success of ACDF, however, our literature has shown the procedure to be associated with certain drawbacks including neurological complications, rapid development of adjacent segment disease, and decreased range of motion owing to solid bony arthrodesis. More recently, cervical disc replacement (CDR) has also become an acceptable surgical option for similar cervical spine pathologies as ACDF. CDR was developed as a motion-sparing alternative to ACDF with purported advantages including minimization of adjacent segment disease and obviation of pseudoarthrosis. Multiple large investigational device exemption (IDE) studies showing the non-inferiority of cervical disc replacement, the cost-effectiveness of this procedure has increasingly become a topic of interest. For this reason, we sought to determine the seven-year cost-effectiveness of single level ACDF versus CDR for the treatment of cervical disc degeneration. (more…)