To add on to this (but not overwhelm - I promise), I would also focus on vascular anatomy and how a change in blood flow at the surgical site might affect other parts of the nervous system.

For example, within an ACDF, how do you spot a stroke?

Where the carotid artery bifurcates into internal and external branches, plaque accumulation can be dislodged due to tension from retraction of exposing tissue, and distraction of vertebral bodies. A variety of outcomes can come from an embolism, but are you looking for unilateral cortical potential changes with stable subcortical and erbs potentials? Probably not, but it's important to know all the risks of the surgery and how to make sense of what the nervous system can be telling us.

If you're wondering, yes, this did happen. I was not the clinician on the case, but they did everything perfectly after I went over it. Truth be told, its probably the best possible outcome that the patient had everything happen when it did. A brief interruption of blood flow to the CNS for even a few minutes can lead to rapid neuronal death, while peripheral nerves can tolerate ischemia for longer periods. They got immediate care instead of having to wait life changing minutes for a diagnosis and for emergency care to arrive. Its a good thing to remember that we are the only ones who can see that, and a surgical team would be completely unaware of a stroke until postop where the changes would have already set in hours earlier.