• Eur Spine J · Jun 2013

    Case Reports

    Congenital C1 arch deficiency: Grand Round presentation.

    • Mahmoud Mohamed Elmalky, Sherief Elsayed, George Arealis, and Hossein Mehdian.
    • Centre for Spinal Studies and Surgery, Queen's Medical Centre, Nottingham University Hospital, Derby Road, NG7 2UH, Nottingham, UK. mah_elmalky@yahoo.com
    • Eur Spine J. 2013 Jun 1; 22 (6): 1223-6.

    IntroductionWe present an uncommon and yet interesting congenital anomaly and discuss the difficulties with diagnosis and controversies in management. C1 arch deficiency is an important consideration in the differential diagnosis of neck pain in children.Material And MethodsA 12-year-old girl presented initially with a loud clicking emanating from the cervical spine during nappy changes in early childhood. Subsequent investigation by way of CT and MRI revealed her to have a deficient posterior arch of the C1 vertebra, and due to persistent and painful clicking she was placed into a cervical brace, which was worn for approximately 1 year. At age 12, her clicking had all but completely resolved but she continued to complain of minor neck pain. She is advised to avoid contact sports and her parents are instructed to observe any new worrying symptoms.ConclusionNo definitive guidelines exist for the management of this congenital anomaly. Indications for surgical intervention prior to any neurological disturbance are unclear, and restricting a child from partaking in healthy activity may not be necessary. We discuss the anomaly and identified management strategies as reported in the literature so far.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…