Posterior cervical surgery are usually done when a patient has multilevel spinal problems in his cervical spine usually presenting as cervical myelopathy. Posterior spine surgery in its initial days mainly meant laminectomy alone . However with time it was felt that in doing a laminectomy for spinal decompression we end up destabilising the posterior support system of spine. The modern solutions to this problem have been in form of lateral mass fixation + laminectomy which involves providing additional support with use of screws and rods.

The second solution for the above problem is doing a laminoplasty which is a motion preserving surgery in which the posterior structures are mobilised in such a way that the pressures on nerves are reduced but the posterior supporting ligaments and bones are preserved.