Cervical spine arthroplasty biomechanics.

The advent of cervical intervertebral disc replacement represents an exciting and new frontier in the treatment of myelopathy and discogenic pain. The goal of most disc arthroplasty designs is to attempt to approximate the normal spinal motion as much as possible. This survey article provides a general overview as to the goals of cervical disc replacement, the current state of knowledge concerning how these devices have been evaluated, and a commentary on future work that should be performed to characterize these devices fully.