Ayelet Eran
This project was conducted during my fellowship at Hopkins under the supervision of Drs. Izbudak and Yousem. We sought to find parameters that would differentiate injured and noninjured children who sustain cervical spine trauma and have asymmetry of the odontoid lateral mass intervals. We encountered this problem frequently during routine CT work in a busy trauma center. Had we opted to send all children with odontoid lateral mass interval asymmetry to MRI for further investigation, we would have caused increased work load in the emergency department and MRI service, as well as increased anxiety on the parts of patients and parents.
In order to answer this research question, we defined an injured group matched them to a noninjured group based on retrospective data, and compared them. Based on this research we found parameters that assist in differentiating between the groups. The groups didn’t differ significantly in the degree of odontoid lateral mass interval asymmetry; however, we found that in the noninjured group the directionality of the head, C1, and C2 was more towards the same direction compared with the injured group.
Currently, in my daily work I use these parameters in children with cervical spine trauma to sort out injured from noninjured patients.