@mmclaugh2002 Welcome to Connect. After surgery as the incision heals, it tightens. It typically takes about 6 weeks for an incision to heal, and I remember that was when my scar tissue tightened a lot and it increased my symptoms from Thoracic Outlet Syndrome that already caused tight chest and neck muscles and pain. If you already had tightness in your chest, the incision can pull on that. If your cervical spine issues involved an injury to your neck, it's possible that there could be an un-diagnosed condition such as TOS. I have done a lot of physical therapy and myofascial release stretching for TOS before and after my spine surgery.

TOS does affect my ability to breathe properly because it is tighter on one side and the tight muscle and fascia extends from my neck to my pelvis surrounding the rib cage, and it makes it harder to expand one side of my chest. My incision from the C5/C6 fusion was very close to the TOS compression area between the collar bone and rib cage and muscles at the side of the neck.

Depending on how long it has been since your surgery, your surgeon may be able to send you to physical therapy for the breathing issues. I was able to go to PT after my surgery with instructions that she could not treat my neck, but she was able to release tight tissue at the base of my rib cage and it helped a lot. I didn't have any hardware, and was in a neck brace for 3 months so I had to be careful. You may be able to do some stretching while standing like lunges, etc, but you'll need to ask if that is safe for you.

Have you told your surgeon about your breathing issues? It could also be a lung infection if you are not able to expand your lungs properly. Anesthesia causes some phlegm accumulation, and if you can't clear it well, it can be retained and caused an infection. That also happened to me and I was on antibiotics 5 days after my surgery.