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What Are the Risks for Cervical Microdiscectomy Surgery?

What Are the Risks for Cervical Microdiscectomy Surgery? (0:54)

Difficulty swallowing, hoarseness and slow or no fusion of the bones are the biggest risks after cervical microdiscectomy surgery. In this video, Andrew Hecht, MD, co-director of Spine Surgery at The Mount Sinai Medical Center, explains those risks.

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In a cervical spine, the rest are slightly different, because we're coming through the front, you may have trouble swallowing in the short term, you may have some very remote chance of getting hoarseness, which is usually temporarily and because we're doing a spinal fusion this time, rather than just removing a piece of disk, you may have trouble fusing the bones together.

So therefore, a delayed fusion or a lack of fusion could be another down side of the operation. But the most common complaint we hear with the cervical disc replacement or cervical fusion, is a temporary trouble swallowing that usually's self-limited, that goes away over time.