Complete Sensory and Motor Recovery from Anterior Spinal Artery Syndrome after Sprain of the Cervical Spine

Abstract

A patient sustained C7-C8 incomplete myelopathy with dissociated sensory loss after a whiplash injury. Cervical radiograms showed no fracture or dislocation but separation of the C4-C5 and C5-C6 spinous processes and anterior tilting of C5 on C6 vertebral body only in the head-neck flexed position. Complete sensory and motor recovery occurred after neck immobilization. The patient’s transient neurologic deficits were probably caused by vascular insufficiency of an anterior radicular artery at the C5-C6 intervertebral foramen.

Multiplanar Cervical Spine Injury Due to Head-Turned Rear Impact

“…1,2 In a 5-year retrospective study of 11,000 patients with cervical spine injury, 87.4% had soft tissue injuries, while only 12.6% had cervical fractures or luxation. 3 In addition, more than 25% of the patients reported symptoms more than 5 years following whiplash.…”

Spinal Canal Narrowing During Simulated Whiplash

“…25 There are also a limited number of case reports of patients who sustained cord injuries without radiographic abnormalities due to whiplash trauma. 26,27 A study of whiplash patients showed that the patients with chronic symptoms had narrower spinal canals than those whose symptoms resolved. 28 Thus, clinical evidence exists to suggest that patients with narrow spinal canals may be at risk for cord injury during whiplash.…”

Neck sprain not arising from car accidents: a retrospective study covering 25 years

“…Going back to 1970, we retrieved 19 studies from Medline [21] about neck sprain, of which 9 were about neck sprain due to car accidents [3,7,11,13,14,32,38,40,42] and 3 were about neck sprain due to sports injuries [5,18,35]. The remaining seven studies, in which the aetiology is unclear, describe treatment and research methods [4,12,15,20,23,37,39]. Research results from 1970 were based on data from hospital registries in which no distinction was made between inpatients and outpatients.…”