CT Trauma of the Spine - Video Lesson

Hey everybody, welcome back. This lesson is about traumatic injuries to the spine that we can demonstrate in CT imaging, focusing on the fractures that are given special names. We'll start with odontoid fractures. An odontoid fracture is a fracture of the odontoid process often caused by falls or motor vehicle accidents. They typically present as a loosened fracture line through the dens with or without displacement. We can see an example of this in this patient. There is a lucent or dark fracture line through the base of the dens where it should be attached to the body of cervical vertebrae number two. In this case, the fracture is stable without displacement. We can see the same fracture in the coronal reformation. This is a coronal reformation created in a plane that bisects the odontoid process. Notice that the fracture line is very clean, lacking any fragmentation or displacement. This is fairly common in odontoid fractures, which