Lin SY, et al. - Cardiovascular (CV) outcomes of cervical spondylosis (CS) patients were determined herein. An increased risk of acute coronary syndrome (ACS) was found to be associated with CS. A link was also noted between receiving treatment for CS (either rehabilitation or spinal decompression) and less risk of ACS.

• Researchers used a national insurance claims data set of 22 million enrollees in Taiwan during 1999–2010 and, identified 27,948 patients with CS and age-, sex-, and comorbidity-matched controls.
• They calculated odds ratios (ORs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) to quantify the link between CS and acute coronary syndrome (ACS), using multivariate logistic regression analysis after adjustment for potential cardiovascular (CV) confounders.

• Researchers identified a total of 744 ACS events among the 27,948 patients with CS.
• Findings demonstrated that the overall incidence of ACS was 4.27 per 1000 person-years in the CS cohort and 3.90 per 1000 person-years in the non-CS cohort, with an adjusted hazard ratio (aHR) of 1.13 (95% CI = 1.08–1.18).
• They also noted that in comparison with the non-CS cohort, the aHRs of ACS were 1.08 (95% CI = 1.03–1.15) in the CS cohort without myelopathy and 1.20 (95% CI = 1.13–1.28) in the CS cohort with myelopathy.
• In addition, data revealed that relative to patients with CS without neurological signs, patients with CS receiving rehabilitation exhibited a 0.67 aHRs of ACS (95% CI = 0.59–0.76), whereas those with neurological signs receiving spinal decompression exhibited 0.73 aHRs of ACS (95% CI = 0.63–0.84).