title: Fracture of anterior cervical plate implant--report of two cases.
abstract: Anterior cervical plate is a convenient and popular implant employed after corpectomy and bone grafting for traumatic or degenerative cervical spine disease. Although short-segment anterior cervical surgery may adequately be managed with anterior plate fixation alone, multilevel anterior cervical constructs exhibit a relatively high complication rate warranting a simultaneous posterior fusion. We report two patients undergoing two-level anterior corpectomy/fusion with a fixed anterior plate alone and exhibiting plate fracture in conjunction with pseudoarthrosis. The instrument failure was mainly attributed to pseudoarthrosis. However, improper contouring of the plate causing microstructural damage might create a weak point and contributed to this unusual hardware failure.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurosurgery, Kaohsiung Medical University Hospital, Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
authors.forename: C P
authors.initials: CP
authors.lastname: Yen
authors.forename: T Y
authors.initials: TY
authors.lastname: Hwang
authors.forename: C J
authors.initials: CJ
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: S L
authors.initials: SL
authors.lastname: Howng
mesh_terms: D001860:Bone Plates; D002574:Cervical Vertebrae / Q000601:surgery*; D017586:Diskectomy; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D011475:Prosthesis Failure; D011542:Pseudarthrosis / Q000150:complications* / Q000601:surgery; D012086:Reoperation; D013122:Spinal Diseases / Q000601:surgery; D013123:Spinal Fusion