Patient-specific spinal instruments for implanting implants and decompression procedures

A system for a patient-specific spinal decompression procedure, the system comprising:

• one or more processors;
• and
• a memory storing instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the system to perform operations comprising:
• receiving patient data for a patient, the patient data including one or more images of the patient's anatomy;
• identifying at least one site of nerve compression and target tissued at least partially contributing to the nerve compression based on the received patient data;
• designing at least one patient-specific instrument configured to access the target tissue and perform a decompression step on the target tissue.

A computer-readable storage medium storing instructions that, when executed by a computing system, cause the computing system to perform operations comprising:

• receiving patient data for a patient, the patient data including one or more images of the patient's spinal region showing the patient's anatomy;
• identifying at least one site of nerve compression and target tissued at least partially contributing to the nerve compression based on the received patient data;
• determining an access path for surgically accessing the target tissue;
• and
• designing at least one patient-specific instrument configured to access the target tissue via the access path and to perform a decompression step on the target tissue.

A computer-implemented method comprising:

• receiving patient data for a patient, the patient data including one or more images of anatomy of the patient;
• determining a surgical plan with one or more spinal corrections for the patient's pre-operative spine for achieving a target corrected spinal configuration based on the patient data;
• and
• predicting and compensating for post-operative nerve compression associated with the one or more spinal corrections.