Abstract

Anteriorly located cervical spinal cord neoplasms often require corpectomy and plating. This approach is difficult at the C2 level because the local anatomy generally requires a transoral approach. Thus, a posterior approach is preferred whenever feasible. It has been previously reported that anteriorly located spinal cord tumors could be removed using a posterior approach in some circumstances. In those cases, tumor-cord interface line should extend posteriorly to a horizontal line drawn along the posterior margin of the vertebral body. If that rule is satisfied, anteriorly located spinal cord tumors can be removed by the postero-lateral approach through a hemilaminectomy. The skin should be incised at the point where the tumor-cord line intersects. Using this technique, we operated two patients with anteriorly located C2 tumors (one cordoma and one meningioma). Intraoperative view and surgical exposition was satisfactory. In this study, we describe the cases and the surgical technique in detail.