In October 2021, over 1,000 cervical spondylosis cases were treated via artificial cervical disc replacement (ACDR) by Professor Liu Hao’s team from the Department of Orthopedics. None of the implanted prostheses required revision, with the secondary surgery rate far lower than the peers at home and abroad, thus creating double records in the quantity and quality of operations by a single team. According to the literature, even in the top international medical centers, 40-60 out of every 1,000 patients who received traditional classical fusion surgery needed secondary revision surgery due to severe postoperative complications (such as prosthesis loosening, dislocation, even aggravation of neurological symptoms, etc.). Even for ACDR, 7-10 out of every 1,000 patients still need a second revision.

Since 2004, WCH has become a well-known ACDR center at home and abroad, and regularly holds cervical disc replacement training courses to teach surgical techniques. The team was once invited to the Medical Education & Research Institute in Memphis, to teach replacement surgery techniques. It has pioneered multi-level cervical hybrid surgery in the world by combining different surgical methods according to exact condition of each level; also it is one of the largest databases of cervical hybrid surgery cases in one single hospital.

At present, WCH, one of the three major cervical surgery centers in China, has co-authored “the National Healthcare Industry Standards for Cervical Artificial Disc Replacement Surgery”, and led the formulation of Expert consensus on the implementation of enhanced recovery after surgery in anterior cervical spine surgery as the first institute.

The team has developed and designed the Chinese artificial cervical disc “Pretic-I” according to the anatomical characteristics of Chinese cervical vertebrae, and began to use it clinically in June 2014. The 5-year follow-up data showed that this prosthesis has achieved non-inferior clinical results compared with imported ones. “Pretic-I”, as the first artificial cervical disc prosthesis with independent intellectual property rights from China, has a promising prospect for clinical application thanks to its obvious advantages in design, performance and price.