How do you determine how many levels need to be addressed during an ACDF? - Dallas Spine Surgeon

Added: 2026-06-03

[00:00:00]combination of patient symptoms, X-rays, MRI, and then identifying what's new and what's old. And so it is normal for certain people to have some degree of degeneration in their neck that's not causing issues. And so if we see a patient who I don't have neck pain, I've never had stuff down my arm before and a month and a half ago they can't feel their right arm and it's in one specific distribution. We can look at the MRI and say you you're new. You're what's causing the problem. we're only going to address what was causing the issue over the past six weeks versus long-term chronic degeneration. So, I think it's about teasing out what is regular age related wear and tear and what's actually causing the patient to have their issues. And then the second level to that conversation is, is there a burning clock on some of these other discs? If we're going to already go in there and do something at let's just say C5 and six, but C6 and 7 is already 80% of the way worn out and we know that C6 and C7 tends to wear out the quickest in the body anyways. Sometimes you weigh the risks and benefits of adding an additional level while you're already in there, even though it may not be causing the problems now to prevent having to come back soon in the future.