This book is about surgical treatment of the sequelae of compressive spinal cord injury. It describes the deforming effects of this trauma on spinal cord tissue, especially on axially oriented nerve fibres, and shows how the intramedullary stress involved leads to overstretching or rupture of these fibres and consequent neurological deficit. The author proves that skull traction is similarly harmful and should therefore be excluded from therapy. Instead, he offers a new surgical method, cervicolordodesis (CLD), which exploits the biomechanical relaxation of elastically stretched medullary tissue in an approach designed to restore conductivity to damaged but surviving nerve fibres. An essential part of this book is the description of the operative CLD technique, which keeps the cervical spine in permanent slight dorsiflexion, relaxing the spinal cord enough to slacken overstretched nerve fibres and allow them the chance to heal. This exciting new approach has applications in, for example, overcoming neurological deficit in quadriplegic patients with only partial destruction of the spinal cord; its potential is highlighted by reports of significant neurological improvement in patients treated to date. This fundamental advance in the treatment of spinal cord injury heralds a new era of modern rehabilitation surgery in which CLD should become the instrument of choice in the hands of orthopaedic, general and neurosurgeons.