Airway management in a displaced comminuted fracture of the mandible and atlas with a vertebral artery injury: A case report

Intraoperative Vertebral Artery Injury: Evaluation, Management, and Prevention

Vertebral artery injury (VAI) is a serious and potentially life-threatening injury that is encountered with trauma to the cervical spine and less frequently during surgery. VAI can occur during either anterior or posterior cervical approaches or instrumentation and often involves anomalous courses of the artery. Although the incidence is rare, serious consequences including fistula formation, thrombosis, pseudoaneurysm development, cerebral ischemia, hemorrhage, and death may occur. Management of VAI can be divided into prevention, including review of preoperative imaging with knowledge of the anatomic course, utilization of surgical landmarks intraoperatively, and prompt recognition and management when injury is encountered.

Fracture heat map of the facial skull demonstrates a danger zone of concomitant cervical spine injuries

Concomitant maxillofacial and cervical spine injuries occur in 0.8-12% of the cases. We examined the relation of injury localization and the probability of cervical spine fracture. A retrospective study was conducted on patients that have been treated at Dortmund General Hospital for injuries both to the maxillofacial region and to the cervical spine between January 1st, 2007 and December 31th, 2017. Descriptive statistical methods were used to describe the correlation of cervical spine injuries with gender, age as well as maxillofacial injury localization. 7708 patients were hospitalized with maxillofacial injury, among them 173 were identified with cervical spine injury. The average ages for both genders lie remarkably above the average of all maxillofacial trauma patients (36.2 y.o. in male and 50.9 y.o. in female). In the group of men, most injuries were found between the ages of 50 and 65. Whereas most injuries among women occurred after the age of 80. The relative ratio of cervical spine injuries (CSI) varies between 1.1 and 5.26% of the maxillofacial injuries (MFI), being highest in the soft tissue injury group, patients with forehead fractures (3.12%) and patients with panfacial fractures (2.52%). Further, nasal, Le Fort I and II, zygomatic complex and mandibular condyle fractures are often associated with CSI. Fractures next to the Frankfurt horizontal plane represent 87.7% of all MFI with concomitant CSI. Patients in critical age groups with a high-energy injury are more likely to suffer both, MFI and CSI injuries. Our findings help to avoid missing the diagnosis of cervical spine injury in maxillofacial trauma patients.