Multilevel Cervical Fusion and Its Effect on Disc Degeneration and Osteophyte Formation
Why this work is in the frame
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Bibliographic record
Abstract
STUDY DESIGN: The effect of single and double cervical fusion on adjacent segments was investigated using a finite element model of the cervical spine. A healthy spine and a cervical spine with a single and double fusion at different levels were analyzed and evaluated. Disc degeneration and osteophyte formation at the endplates and joints can then be addressed. OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the biomechanical effects of cervical fusion on the cervical spine from C3-C7. The goal was to asses the increase of intervertebral disc and bone stress induced by cervical fusion, the effects of single versus double level fusion, and whether the level in which the fusion is performed, might affect the biomechanics of the spine. SUMMARY OF BACKGROUND DATA: Clinical studies have reported that 25% of fusion patients report further degenerative problems within 10 years of fusion. METHODS.: Four finite element models of single fusion at different levels were generated, as well as three additional models for the case of double fusion. The maximum von Mises stresses for anulus, nucleus, and endplates and the motion of the nonfused segments were obtained during lateral bending, flexion, axial torsion, and extension. Each case was compared with the normal cervical spine. RESULTS: Results showed stress increases of up to 96% in the anulus, nucleus, and endplates after fusion. Facet constraining prevents increases in stress during extension. The stresses at all levels tend to be larger for double than for single fusion. CONCLUSIONS: The results of this study quantify the significant increase in the level of stresses below and above the fused segments in the cervical spine. A sustained level of this stress can lead to further discs degeneration and osteophytes.
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Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
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 it