Personalized Research Updates —in 15 Minutes or Less

This 10-year population-based cohort included 132 subaxial cervical spine fractures in 127 patients with ankylosing spondylitis (median age 70; 88% male), most from low-energy falls; 94% were AO type B or C and 20% had cervical spinal cord injury. Primary management was surgical in 67% and conservative in 33% (14% of conservatively managed patients required delayed surgery); revision surgery occurred in 9% and 90-day mortality was 16%, which was associated with older age, higher ASA class, and in-hospital pneumonia but not with cord injury or treatment modality.

In a nationwide time-varying cohort of 1,620,585 individuals aged ≥50 (2010–2022), degenerative spine disease (SPINE_DX) and spinal fusion (SPINE_FUSION) were modeled as exposures and compared with controls for incident hip osteoarthritis (HOA) and progression to total hip arthroplasty (THA). Both SPINE_DX (HR 1.66, 95% CI 1.64–1.68) and SPINE_FUSION (HR 1.22, 95% CI 1.19–1.25) were associated with increased HOA incidence, and among those with HOA progression to THA was higher with SPINE_FUSION (HR 2.32, 95% CI 2.06–2.62) and SPINE_DX (HR 1.51, 95% CI 1.41–1.62); results were consistent after inverse probability weighting.

Network meta-analysis of FDA IDE studies and international RCTs with >5 years' follow-up compared 1-level versus contiguous 2-level cervical disc arthroplasty (CDA1 vs CDA2) using ACDF as the anchored comparator. There was no significant difference between CDA1 and CDA2 for adjacent-segment-disease reoperations (OR 0.98, 95% CI 0.38–2.54) or all-cause reoperations (OR 0.98, 95% CI 0.40–2.39).