Spinal Trauma

A spinal trauma is an injury in the spinal column where bone, muscles, ligaments and/or intervertebral discs can be affected. Basically we can distinguish two groups of trauma:

  1. with involvement of the spinal cord

  2. without involvement of the spinal cord

In healthy people, the spinal column displays a high degree of stability and it takes a lot of strength to cause injuries in it. The typical causes of damages in the spinal column are automobile accidents – often with the result of a so-called whiplash of the neck spine – motorcycle and bicycle accidents, head jump into water and falls from a corresponding height, for instance out of a ladder, sport or violence. Diseases such as osteoporosis favor fractures.

Symptoms: Independent from the involvement of the spinal marrow, you can feel sudden back pains when there is an injury in the spinal column. Depending on the affected structures and dimension of the trauma, mobility problems and loss of sensitivity, such as prickling or deafness, can occur, irradiating to the arms and legs. If there occur rotations of the spinal column without injuring the bones, only the respective part of the body feels pain. In some cases, symptoms of a whiplash trauma in the neck spine appear only after a few days. If the spinal marrow is completely severed, a transversal paralysis from the relative area downward occurs.

Therapy: Slight compression of vertebral bodies, injuries in soft tissue and flat, stable fractures usually require no operation. By means of conservative therapies, which encompass rest, physiotherapy and heat or cold application, depending on the type of injury, we have good chances of healing. For cases of complicated spinal fractures with displaced fragments or splinters affecting the spinal marrow, we have several types of operations at our disposal. By means of microsurgery, we can relieve the neural structures. In some cases, stabilization measures (spondylodesis) are necessary. In order to guarantee the stability of osteoporotic fractures, we rebuild damaged vertebrae with minimally invasive kyphoplasty.