[Significance and mechanism of thoracic and lumbar spine injuries in traffic accidents].

An analysis of 96 persons who sustained injuries to dorsal and lumbar vertebrae during traffic accidents, established that spinal injuries (sustained by 3.8% of the 96 persons) are quite rare. Pedestrians, the elderly, and polytraumatized persons with extensive head injuries as accompanying trauma following particularly serious accidents are at especially high risk. The most frequent spinal injuries are compression fractures, which especially often give rise to the injury pattern found in the spine of motorcycle riders, pedestrians, and car passengers not wearing seat belts. In these cases a so-called "pushing-further" mechanism is quite often assumed as the biomechanical cause. In comparison, ruptures of the transverse process have often been established for car passengers wearing seat belts, which can be attributed causally to a psoas effect resulting from an overstretching movement of the body and muscular strain. Basically three different biomechanical movement patterns were established in this study: sliding mechanism, shearing effect and psoas effect; which of these is are involved depends on the capacity in which the person affected takes part in street traffic. All the spinal fractures examined can be classed as trauma sustained while travelling at high speed. They are not observed following collisions at low or moderate speed.