Epidemiology of athletic neck injury.

Neck injuries in sports are common, typically debilitating, and quite predictable in retrospect by mechanism of injury as to one of four natures--sprains/strains, fractures, brachial plexus pinches/stretches, and spinal cord injury. Of these, the spinal cord injury, whether a concussion or contusion or physical disruption, is obviously the most severe and also, ironically, the best tracked because of its definition and notoriety when it is experienced. This article discusses the essence of what has been learned epidemiologically over recent decades since the advent of organized attention to spinal cord injuries among athletes.