The Spine in Sports Injuries: The Cervical Spine

Abstract

Cervical spine injuries are extremely common in athletes and range from minor strains and sprains to severe, life-threatening cervical fractures with spinal cord injuries. A basic understanding of cervical spine anatomy and biomechanics, imaging indications, and most appropriate imaging techniques, as well as of the most common types of injury, is necessary for any physician ordering and/or interpreting imaging studies of athletes who suffer from acute or chronic cervical spine injury. Furthermore, radiologists should be able to recognize predisposing conditions, more specifically congenital spinal stenosis, which increase the risk for serious cervical spine injury in athletes even after a minor trauma. This chapter provides multiple examples of cervical spine injuries in athletes, highlighting the imaging findings in these injuries and the imaging modalities that can be used to assess such injuries.