Cervical Spondylosis Treated by Bilateral Facetectomy and Laminectomy

C ERVICAL spondylosis accompanied by arthritic bony ridging With compression of the cord and nerve roots is not uncommon in older people. 7-9,~2,~9-21,24 It is an insidiously progressive disease, frequently misdiagnosed 6,~~ as degenerative myelopathy, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or lateral sclerosis on the basis of arteriosclerotic vascular insufficiency3 To date, surgical therapy has been less successful than in cases of laterally placed cervical lesions. Trauma to the cord in radical operations or limited improvement in conservative operations have all too often been the result. For the last 6 years the writer and his associate, I)r. Benjamin Whitcomb, have utilized a rather extensive laminectomy plus bilateral partial or complete facetectomy by means of an electric drill. The results have been sufficiently gratifying to justify a description of the operation and to report on a series of 6 of the author's cases.