Imaging of spinal injuries

Abstract

In the European Union, there are over 130,000 victims of severe spinal injuries each year; about 15,000 involve the cervical spine. It has been shown that 23-57% of spinal fractures are missed by standard radiography compared to multi-detector (multi-slice) CT, and there are already many advocates who stress that in severe spinal trauma MDCT should be the first imaging modality (Hauser et al. 2003; Boehm et al. 2004). © 2007 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.