Medical Image of the Week: Cervical Fracture and Dislocation

Wednesday, April 2, 2014 at 8:00AM
Rick Robbins, M.D. in CT scan, MRI, bradycardia, cardiac ultrasound, cervical dislocation, cervical fracture, motor vehicle accident, neuogenic shock, stunned myocardium, trauma

Figure 1. Panel A: Computerized tomography (CT) scan of the neck showing C5-C6 fracture and dislocation (arrow). Panel B: Accompanying magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the neck.

A 25 year old woman was a restrained driver in a rollover motor vehicle accident (MVA) and suffered a C5-C6 fracture-dislocation with spinal cord injury (Figure 1). She developed neurogenic stunned myocardium, symptomatic bradycardia and neurogenic shock. Her cardiac ultrasound has been previously presented and can be viewed by clicking here. After developing the adult respiratory distress syndrome and multi-system organ failure she had multiple cardiac arrests and died after 5 days in the intensive care unit.

Evan D. Schmitz, MD

Richland, Washington

Reference as: Schmitz ED. Medical image of the week: cervical fracture and dislocation. Southwest J Pulm Crit Care. 2014;8(4):204. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.13175/swjpcc030-14 PDF 

             

Article originally appeared on Southwest Journal of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep (https://www.swjpcc.com/).