Asian Spine Journal

Rawat and Kumar: Letter to the Editor: A Randomized Control Trial Comparing Local Autografts and Allografts in Single Level Anterior Cervical Discectomy and Fusion Using a Stand-Alone Cage

Letter to the Editor

Online first: April 25, 2022

DOI: https://doi.org/10.31616/asj.2022.0100.r1

Letter to the Editor: A Randomized Control Trial Comparing Local Autografts and Allografts in Single Level Anterior Cervical Discectomy and Fusion Using a Stand-Alone Cage

Sanjay Singh Rawat¹, Vishal Kumar²

¹Trauma and Emergency (Orthopaedics), All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Raipur, India

²Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh, India

Corresponding author: Sanjay Singh Rawat Trauma and Emergency (Orthopaedics), Gate No. 1, Great Eastern Road, Opposite Gurudwara, All India Institute of Medical Sciences Campus, Tatibandh, Raipur, Chhattisgarh 492099, India
Tel: +91-9927444089, Fax: +91-1722756740, E-mail: sanjaymamc07@gmail.com

Received March 7, 2022 Accepted March 11, 2022

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

See the reply "Response to: A Randomized Control Trial Comparing Local Autografts and Allografts in Single Level Anterior Cervical Discectomy and Fusion Using a Stand-Alone Cage" in Volume 16 on page 313.

See the article "A Randomized Control Trial Comparing Local Autografts and Allografts in Single Level Anterior Cervical Discectomy and Fusion Using a StandAlone Cage" in Volume 15 on page 817.

Dear Editor,

We read this article “A randomized control trial comparing local autografts and allografts in single level anterior cervical discectomy and fusion using a stand-alone cage” by Kanna et al. [1] with interest and had a deliberate discussion at length extensive amongst our peer of spine surgeons. At the outset, we congratulate the authors for a thought-provoking article on a less pondered topic of a common problem and request generous views of our few salient queries.

1. A single-center study inclusive of only 27 patients operated by a single surgeon may be a too-small sample size to conclude on a procedural option for a common cervical spine problem being seen and tackled by spine surgeons [2,3].
2. In the study, 21 patients were diagnosed with radiculopathy and six with myelopathy. In these sub-cohorts, how many underwent local grafting and allograft subsequently and had the two diagnoses potentially skew and bias the study result?
3. The randomization numbers were generated by a computer-generated random chart in this study; how was it ensured that patients falling in the local grafting group would have sufficient osteophytes to fill in the standalone cage being used on them [4]?
4. Is there any specific reason for patients with the American Society of Anesthesiologists grading >3 being excluded from the study?

Conflict of Interest

Conflict of Interest: No potential conflict of interest relevant to this article was reported.

REFERENCES

REFERENCES: References

1. Kanna RM, Perambuduri AS, Shetty AP, Rajasekaran S. A randomized control trial comparing local autografts and allografts in single level anterior cervical discectomy and fusion using a stand-alone cage. Asian Spine J 2021;15:817–24.
[Article] [PubMed]

2. Miller LE, Block JE. Safety and effectiveness of bone allografts in anterior cervical discectomy and fusion surgery. Spine (Phila Pa 1976) 2011;36:2045–50.
[Article] [PubMed]

3. Floyd T, Ohnmeiss D. A meta-analysis of autograft versus allograft in anterior cervical fusion. Eur Spine J 2000;9:398–403.
[Article] [PubMed] [PMC]

4. Park JI, Cho DC, Kim KT, Sung JK. Anterior cervical discectomy and fusion using a stand-alone polyetheretherketone cage packed with local autobone : assessment of bone fusion and subsidence. J Korean Neurosurg Soc 2013;54:189–93.
[Article] [PubMed] [PMC]

Letter to the Editor: A Randomized Control Trial Comparing Local Autografts and Allografts in Single Level Anterior Cervical Discectomy and Fusion Using a Stand-Alone Cage

References