Treating Multilevel Cervical Degenerative Disk Disease in a Patient With Stage IV Lung Cancer With Notable Comorbidities Using a Drug Eluting Biomaterial: A Case Report

A 64-year-old patient with stage IV non-small-cell lung carcinoma and several comorbidities, which include obesity and long-term smoking, was treated with N-allyl noroxymorphone eluting osteoinductive bone graft biomaterial. The patient had multilevel degenerative disk disease (DDD), which has a high rate of failure when osteoinductive bone grafts are not used. Infuse, the most widely administered osteoinductive bone graft, is contraindicated in the spine for patients with active tumor. As such, a novel drug eluting osteoinductive biomaterial was administered to this patient, for whom no other therapeutic options were available, to promote bone fusion in a three-level anterior cervical diskectomy and fusion as part of the Food and Drug Administration Expanded Access program. Despite patient comorbidities that are associated with poor bone physiology, confirmed radiographic fusion was achieved in all three cervical levels at 8 months.