**3. Post-operative care following cervical arthroplasty**

The post-operative care following arthroplasty is the same regardless of site of service, i.e., hospital inpatient, hospital outpatient (HOPD) vs. ASC outpatient, with the exception of the length of stay i.e. time to discharge post-operatively. In the ASC setting, the time to discharge is three hours whereas the time to discharge in a hospital setting may be 24-48 hours. The care includes the following:

	- a.Isometric strengthening typically at 2 weeks
	- b.Dynamic range of motion at 6 weeks as needed

## **4. Clinical benefits of arthroplasty vs. fusion**

Cervical arthroplasty is designed to provide maintenance of physiologic motion and prevent or mitigate the negative sequelae of fusion as follows:


### **5. Surgical technique**

When cervical arthroplasty devices were first FDA approved and released on the market, it was presumed by this author that the procedure would be as safe or safer

*Safety and Efficiency of Cervical Disc Arthroplasty in Ambulatory Surgery Centers DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.99589*


### **Figure 2.**

*Table graph showing the author's number of outpatient cervical arthroplasties from 2013 through 2020.*

than ACDF for several reasons. The majority of patients who undergo arthroplasty rather than fusion do not require use of a drill with resulting bone bleeding. The arthroplasty procedure is performed with removal of the cartilaginous endplates but not the bony endplates. The result is less bleeding and an overall faster procedure than ACDF surgery. Otherwise, the arthroplasty procedure is very similar to an ACDF. There have been numerous papers proving safety and efficiency of outpatient ACDF surgery [4, 5].

In the author's personal experience of more than 400 outpatient arthroplasties including both one- and two-level procedures, there have been no major AEs (**Figure 2**).
