Approximately 20% of car-to-car accidents in the U.S. are believed to be rear-end collisions, and approximately 10% of the whiplash injuries resulting from rear-end impacts require longer term therapy. Whiplash injuries involve a very wide range of symptoms, such as surgical symptoms, neurological symptoms, audiological symptoms, otorhinolaryngological symptoms, sense-of-balance symptoms, teeth-occlusion symptoms, etc. Whiplash injuries have such subtle characteristics that patients themselves complain of various symptoms in addition to these diverse symptoms, even in the absence of objective medical evidence. An AM 50-percentile finite-element model of the whole human body, called THUMS (Total HUman Model for Safety), was developed to study the mechanisms of human-body injury during a collision. In this research, the same model was utilized to study the mechanisms of injury to the cervical vertebrae region from whiplash during a collision. A cervical spine model that newly incorporates spinal cord, nerve roots, cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), spinal dura mater, etc., was then verified using cadaver test data. Its validity was examined on the basis of various hypotheses studied to date: the myalgia hypothesis, the theory of nerve-root pressure caused by compression of the spinal cord and nerve roots, the theory of facet joint impingement, the theory of the shear deformation of facet joints and ligaments, etc. Also, whiplash symptoms resulting from the leakage of CSF (i.e. low intracranial pressure syndrome), which recently has attracted attention in Japan, also are evaluated with respect to the existence of spinal dura mater spinalis injury. For the covering abstract see ITRD E825082.
Abstract