1990 Volume 39 Issue 1 Pages 267-269
The purpose of this paper is to describe the factors which infulence the postoprative long-term follow-up results of ossification of cervical posterior longitudinal ligament (OPLL).
In this paper, 115 patients were studied. There were 85 males and 30 females. The mean age of this group of patients was 55 years with a range from 28 to 81 years. The duration of follow-up varied from 1 year to 17 years, the average being 6 years and 11 months. We performed multivariate analysis to evaluate the weight of various factors: age, sex, duration of symptom, trauma, type of ossification, dysfunction of extrimities, sensory disturbance, dysfunction of bladder, antero-posterior diameter of cervical canal and so on.
The main results found in this study were as follows:
1) The factors which infulence the postoperaive results were, in order of weight, onset by trauma, age, dysfunction of the bladder, duration of symptom.
2) But duration of symptom in OPLL is not so important as in cervical spondylotic myelopathy (CSM).
These results showed that spinal cord in OPLL is compressed statically and not dynamically compared with in CSM. Because of this, symptomatic OPLL has high posibility of irreversible change in spinal cord and we have to decide carefully the timing of operation for this condition.
