Dysphagia after anterior cervical spine surgery is a common early finding. However, it decreases significantly by 6 months. The minority of patients experience moderate or severe symptoms by 6 months after the procedure. Female gender and multiple surgical levels could be identified as risk factors for the development of postoperative dysphagia.

EPFR provides significantly improved patient outcomes. Patients with more severe symptoms before EPFR and those with symptoms for longer than 2 years had worse results. Obesity had no negative effect on outcome. WC patients had inferior results compared to non-WC patients. Women achieved better results than men. This finding may be biased because most WC patients were men.

No abstract