How to Diagnose Acute Cervical Sprains & Strains

Cervical sprains can make you acutely aware that a your head weighs 11 pounds--as much as a bowling ball. Carrying around a bowling ball on top of sore muscles can be a chore. Making sure that you are dealing with a sprain and not a more serious condition is crucial. It requires an understanding of many factors and attention to details.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

1. Learn about the anatomy of the cervical spine and the way in which nerves come out of the spinal cord through openings in the cervical vertebrae. Read about the muscles that support cervical structures and the sorts of factors that can injure them. Get an appreciation for the strap muscles of the neck. Realize that the trapezius muscle forma a triangular entity that actually sweeps down the back.

2. Catalog your symptoms to see if they are compatible with a cervical sprain or strain. The most common symptoms are neck pain, shoulder pain, increase in pain with rotation of the head and limitation of range of motion.

3. Check your recent history to see if there is any activity that can be associated with the onset of your symptoms. In some circumstances, the event associated with the onset of your symptoms is obvious for example, an auto or athletic injury. Other times, a bit more sleuthing is required. Activities such as cradling a telephone, watching television while laying on your side, or clenching your teeth can cause cervical symptoms, but because these activities are chronic they may be ignored.

4. Be on the lookout for numbness in your upper extremities or obvious muscle weakness (not tightness but weakness). These are associated with a radiculopathy--involvement of cervical nerves--and not just a muscle sprain. WHAT SHOULD BE DONE IF THIS SYMPTOM IS PRESENT?

5. Treat your neck. For 5 to 7 days, rest, gentle stretching, heat and ice are the best treatment. See your personal physician if your symptoms have not resolved in this time.

6. Pursue your workup with your physician to rule out fractures, ruptured or bulging discs or other causes for your symptoms that may mimic a cervical sprain. the workup may include x-rays or other visualization procedures if it appears that you do not have a cervical sprain.

Tips & Warnings

• If you have incurred significant trauma as in an auto accident, including direct trauma or acceleration, deceleration injury (whiplash), or a major athletic injury or fall, immediate attention in an emergency facility is needed. This is appropriate because cervical fractures can be associated with life threatening spinal cord trauma that may not at first be obvious.

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Resources

• General discussion of cervical sprains with description of anatomy.
• More detailed description of cervical sprain.