Fang H, Liu PF, Ge C, Zhang WZ, Shang XF, Shen CL, He R. Anterior cervical corpectomy decompression and fusion for cervical kyphosis in a girl with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome: A case report. World J Clin Cases 2019; 7(4): 532-537 [PMID: 30842966 DOI: 10.12998/wjcc.v7.i4.532]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Rui He, MD, Chief Doctor, Department of Spinal Surgery, The First Affiliated Hospital of USTC, No. 1, Swan Lake Road, Zhengwu District, Hefei 230000, Anhui Province, China. herui2005208@sina.com
Research Domain of This Article
Medicine, Research & Experimental
Article-Type of This Article
Case Report
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Huang Fang, Peng-Fei Liu, Chang Ge, Wen-Zhi Zhang, Xi-Fu Shang, Rui He, Department of Spinal Surgery, The First Affiliated Hospital of USTC, Hefei 230036, Anhui Province, China
Cai-Liang Shen, Department of Spinal Surgery, The First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University, Hefei 230022, Anhui Province, China
Author contributions: He R, Fang H, Liu PF, Ge C, Zhang WZ, Shang XF, and Shen CL examined the patient and collected the clinical data; He R performed the surgery and analyzed the radiologic imaging data; Fang H wrote the paper.
Informed consent statement: Informed written consent was obtained from the patient prior to all procedures described in the report as well as for the use of the patient’s clinical information and images for published scientific works.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All of the authors report no relationships that could be construed as a conflict of interest.
CARE Checklist (2016) statement: The authors have read the CARE Checklist (2016), and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the CARE Checklists (2016).
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Rui He, MD, Chief Doctor, Department of Spinal Surgery, The First Affiliated Hospital of USTC, No. 1, Swan Lake Road, Zhengwu District, Hefei 230000, Anhui Province, China. herui2005208@sina.com
Telephone: 13966731701
Received: November 3, 2018 Peer-review started: November 5, 2018 First decision: January 5, 2019 Revised: January 21, 2019 Accepted: January 26, 2019 Article in press: January 26, 2019 Published online: February 26, 2019 Processing time: 115 Days and 6.9 Hours
Abstract
BACKGROUND
Spinal deformities in Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (EDS; type VI) are generally progressive and severe. Surgical treatment has been described for kyphoscoliosis in the thoracolumbar spine. However, there are few studies describing the consequences of an anterior approach in cervical kyphosis. An anterior approach may not be able to fully decompress the spinal canal and restore the normal curvature of the cervical spine. Therefore, the anterior approach for cervical kyphosis in young children is hard. We describe the first case in an EDS girl with cervical kyphosis who received satisfactory anterior cervical corpectomy decompression and fusion.
CASE SUMMARY
The chief complaints of a 16-year-old girl with EDS were double upper limb weakness for 7 years and double lower limb walking instability for 2 years. Moreover, the imaging results revealed that the degree of kyphosis from cervical vertebra 2 to 4 accompanying with spinal cord compression was 30°. An anterior cervical corpectomy involving cervical vertebra 3 and a titanium mesh implant were performed with internal fixation. The results at 3 mo after surgery demonstrated that the anterior fusion was solid, and the kyphosis of the cervical spine was corrected. Additionally, the power of all four extremities was significantly improved.
CONCLUSION
The incidence rate of cervical kyphosis in EDS is rare. The surgical treatment for these patients, especially an anterior approach, is challenging. Therefore, to develop safer and more effective strategies to treat cervical kyphosis in EDS, there is still much work to do.
Core tip: Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (ESD) is a rare inherited and clinically heterogeneous group of connective tissue disorders. We report a case diagnosed with ESD that was treated by anterior cervical surgery. The clinical outcome is satisfactory.
