What's a cervical disc disorder with myelopathy?

[fatrabbit]

Just to get it out there: I'm a first semester student and neuro hasn't been covered yet in class.

I've searched my text book and can't find anything on this. The admitting Dx was cervical disc disorder with myelopathy and the pt had a posterior cervical laminoplasty with instrumentation (again, have no clue what this is and don't know where to find out).

I'm not asking anyone to write an entire care plan for me. I just need a 1-2 sentence overview of what the Dx and surgery are as a launch pad for the rest of my research.

From the little that I was able to find, I'm under the impression that something is wrong with the intervertebral disc and it's causing problems with the spinal cord (maybe some kind of stenosis?).

[Rose_Queen, BSN, MSN, RN]

Sometimes, those darn surgeons can be a little wordy. If you google cervical myelopathy, you will have better results than trying to find all of the words. Here's one result.

Same with the procedure- break it down to just cervical laminoplasty, and you'll find results like this one.

Instrumentation means that implants were used for stabilization. Again, by breaking the procedure into pieces, you'll find search results like this.

When you get into complex, multipart diagnoses and surgical procedures, breaking them down into smaller parts can yield better search results.

And just an FYI, all of those sites linked are for laypeople and are not academic, peer reviewed journal articles.

[Jolie, BSN]

I just cut and pasted your exact words into Google and got multiple articles from seemingly reliable websites.

[fatrabbit]

Thanks for the advice!!!! (very helpful) =]