Observation On The Aging Changes Of Cervical Spinal Curvature And Its Clinical Signification

Objective To study of the aging changes of cervical spinal curvature and to provide anatomical data of the aging changes of cervical spinal curvature.Methods One hundred and twenty health volunteers were selected,and they were between ten and sixty years old or more.The half of them was men.All of them had not the symptoms of cervical syndrome in clinic and X-ray lateral projection.They were divided to six groups,the first group was ten to nineteen ages,second group was twenty to twenty-nine ages,third was thirty to thirty-nine,and so on.To take the standard cervical lateral projection in perspective condition by 500MA AX-Fast(right erect position,drop shoulder,head hypsokinesis,the ear-nose line paralleled with horizontal plane,the range was from external occipital protuberance to the second thoracic vertebrae).To measure C1～C7 vertical dimension,distance between two centrums from C2～C7(included the anterior border,the middle and the posterior edge),cervical spinal curvature(by Borden's method) and vertical dimension from arc-chord spur to the seventh cervical vertebrae.Results The cervical spinal curvature obviously changed with the aging changes.Above the C4～5 gap,the arc-chord spur was less and became straight gradually from the second group.Under the C4～5 gap,the arc-chord spur was increasingly longer.Conclusion There is a relativity that has no linearity correlation between the cervical spinal curvature and age.The cervical vertebrae gaps change is the results of the variation of cervical spine curvature with the aging changes.