The Ewha Medical Journal
Ewha Womans University School of Medicine
Original Article

Operative Findgins of Symptomatic Trivial Cervical Pathology after Rear-Car Collision Injury

Myung-Hyun Kim, Do-Sang Cho, Joon-Kyu Moon*

Copyright ⓒ 2003. Ewha Womans University School of Medicine. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Published Online: Mar 31, 2003

Abstract

Three cases operated on with anterior micorforaminotomy because of chronic symptoms after whiplash injury were analyzed. The indications for surgery were medically intractable, definite cervical radicular symptoms with trivial cervical pathology on preoperative usual radiological studies. On operative findings, the minor disc protrusion and thickening of posterior longitudinal ligament were the representative pathologies. At follow-up, all patients showed disappearance of pre-operative symptoms. Based on Robinson's criteria for the surgical results, all 3 patients had good results. We suggest the trivial cervical pathologies, proved by the target-oriented, anterior microforaminotomy, can be the origin of cervical radiculopathy after low-velocity, rear-car collision injury in our series.

Keywords: Cervical disc; Radiculopathy; Whiplah injury; Microforaminotomy