DORSAL-ROOT GANGLION INJURIES IN 109 BLUNT TRAUMA FATALITIES

In an autopsy study of 180 cervical spines, 109 were from victims of f atal blunt injury. A search was made for injuries to the dorsal root g anglia. The whole cervical spines, from the skull base to T1, were for malin fixed, deep frozen and sagittally sectioned on a specially adapt ed band saw in 2.5 mm thick slices. In 15 of the 109 fatally injured i ndividuals, 44 examples of interstitial haemorrhage into a dorsal root ganglion (DRG) were found. This axis sometimes accompanied by neural tissue disruption, visible only on histological study. The intraneural DRG haemorrhage was found in 13.8 per cent of all the injured individ uals, but this prevalence rose to 34.5 per cent when only those (29) i ndividuals surviving the injury between 2 h and 7 days were considered . The possible relevance of such injuries, in survivors of injury, to acute and chronic pain syndromes is discussed. (C) 1998 Elsevier Scien ce Ltd. All rights reserved.