Degenerative Cervical Myelopathy
Bibliographic record
Abstract
STUDY DESIGN: Review. OBJECTIVE: To formally introduce "degenerative cervical myelopathy" (DCM) as the overarching term to describe the various degenerative conditions of the cervical spine that cause myelopathy. Herein, the epidemiology, pathogenesis, and genetics of conditions falling under this hypernym are carefully described. SUMMARY OF BACKGROUND DATA: Nontraumatic, degenerative forms of cervical myelopathy represent the commonest cause of spinal cord impairment in adults and include cervical spondylotic myelopathy, ossification of the posterior longitudinal ligament, ossification of the ligamentum flavum, and degenerative disc disease. Unfortunately, there is neither a specific term nor a specific diagnostic International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision code to describe this collection of clinical entities. This has resulted in the inconsistent use of diagnostic terms when referring to patients with myelopathy due to degenerative disease of the cervical spine. METHODS: Narrative review. RESULTS: The incidence and prevalence of myelopathy due to degeneration of the spine are estimated at a minimum of 41 and 605 per million in North America, respectively. Incidence of cervical spondylotic myelopathy-related hospitalizations has been estimated at 4.04/100,000 person-years, and surgical rates seem to be rising. Pathophysiologically, myelopathy results from static compression, spinal malalignment leading to altered cord tension and vascular supply, and dynamic injury mechanisms. Occupational hazards, including transportation of goods by weight bearing on top of the head, and other risk factors may accelerate DCM development. Potential genetic factors include those related to MMP-2 and collagen IX for degenerative disc disease, and collagen VI and XI for ossification of the posterior longitudinal ligament. In addition, congenital anomalies including spinal stenosis, Down syndrome, and Klippel-Feil syndrome may predispose to the development of DCM. CONCLUSION: Although DCMs can present as separate diagnostic entities, they are highly interrelated, frequently manifest concomitantly, present similarly from a clinical standpoint, and seem to be in part a response to compensate and improve stability due to progressive age and wear of the cervical spine. The use of the term "degenerative cervical myelopathy" is advocated. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: 5.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.009 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.007 | 0.008 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.018 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".