Fig. 1.

Preoperative planning and virtual surgery for occipitocervical fixation. Adequate occipitocervical angle of the plate can be determined in advance. If images from computed tomography (CT) are obtained in a position in which the patient does not feel discomfort while swallowing, the templating plate/rod is bent and fitted to produce the appropriate angle on the full-scale three-dimensional (3D) model. After bringing the sterilized templating plate/rod into the operating room, the true implanting plate/rod construct was bent as the same shape of the templating plate/rod during surgery