A team of doctors from the Ras Al Khaimah Hospital , UAE performed a rare 7-hour-long emergency surgical procedure on a 29-year-old construction worker . The man suffered an accidental fall at the construction site from a height of 3 meters. The accident crushed his neck bone completely. To make matters worse, the broken bone fragments caused compression of his cervical spine, and therefore, the patient was at an increased risk of developing quadriplegia.
To save the patient, the doctors conducted a complex and delicate surgery, known as ‘ Anterior Cervical Decompression and Fusion ’. In this procedure, the doctors first removed the shattered cervical vertebral fragments and then inserted an expandable cage. Any gap created due to extrusion of the bone fragments was filled up with bone cement. To provide stability to the spine, the cage was fixed to the normal vertebrae with the help…
