Cervical Spine Cineradiography After Traffic Accidents

In victims of automobile accidents, complaints referable to the area of the cervical spine are frequent. Various methods have been devised to define the nature of these injuries. The mild trauma sustained in most of them accounts for the paucity of surgical or anatomic corroboration of clinical and radiographic findings.

Fielding⁷ has used cineradiography to study the cervical spine. At the University of California San Francisco Medical Center, 61 patients with complaints referable to the cervical spine after automobile accidents were studied by a similar method. The review and analysis of the resultant films form the basis of this report.

Review of the Literature  Morrissey¹⁸ reported that during 1957 approximately 187,000 persons suffered myofascial cervical injuries from automobile accidents. Cammack,⁵ using figures derived from the National Safety Council, reported that 15% of all automobile accidents are of the rear-end type. Lipow,¹⁵ Jackson,¹² and Kulowski¹⁴