Author(s)

Lior Merom^1,2, Michael Soudry^1,2, Nahum Rosenberg^1,2

¹Spinal Surgery Unit, Orthopaedics Department, Rambam-Health Care Campus, Haifa, Israel.
²The Ruth and Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel.

In order to reduce the magnitude of the force applied to skull for treatment of acute cervical spine dislocation, we developed a method of skeletal traction based on reduction of friction forces under the patient’s head. Traction force was applied to sculls of five patients with cervical fracture-dislocations. A difference in friction interface between the patient’s head and shoulder girdle was created. The traction weight required for the reduction of the vertebral dislocation was significantly lower than an expected minimal traction weight in the commonly used techniques (p = 0.013). The presented method permits an effective and safe reduction of dislocated cervical vertebra by a relatively low traction force.

Fracture, Dislocation, Cervical Vertebra, Scull Traction

Merom, L. , Soudry, M. and Rosenberg, N. (2015) Low Friction Traction for Cervical Spine Dislocation. Open Journal of Clinical Diagnostics, 5, 117-120. doi: 10.4236/ojcd.2015.53019.