Unilateral cervical nerve root compression causing radiculopathy, which does not improve with conservative measures, is safely and effectively treated with surgery. Both anterior and posterior approaches have been described. Overall results from either of these broad categories of approaches are equivalent. Posterior approaches target the cervical root compression directly and allow decompression by widening the neural foramen and/or removing a lateral disc fragment. Following success of the open technique, variations of this technique were introduced to minimize approach-related complications.