Dorsal Roots and Associated Ganglia from the First Cervical Spinal Segment in Humans
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Authors
Kyriakakis, Diamantis
Kacaj, Xhorxh
Terfera, David R.
Kelliher, Kevin R.
Issue Date
2015-03-27
Type
Presentation
Language
en_US
Keywords
Chiropractic , Dorsal roots , Cervical spinal segment , Human spine
Alternative Title
Abstract
Pain is a debilitating sensory experience that affects everyone at some point in his or her lives. In the United States alone unrelieved pain results in decreased quality of life, losses in productivity adding up to hundreds of billions of dollars annually, increased hospital stays, increases out patient visits all adding up to hundred of billions of dollars in increased health care costs. One in four Americans over the age of 20 report having had issues with chronic pain. Thirty-four percent of those reported having either severe headaches (15%), neck pain(15%) or facial pain (4%). Despite the tremendous burden on society pain mechanisms are still not completely understood. There is a great deal of knowledge and research devoted to the somatosensory systems, including pain systems, of the head and neck yet there is still much more that remains to be elucidated. For instance, current dogma describes the first cervical nerve (C1) as being purely motor in function. This is the most common description given in medical textbooks and reports and is being taught this way to current health professional students. Despite what is being taught anatomical reports of sensory roots coming off the first spinal segments have been observed (2). We suggest that presence of C1 dorsal roots, and a corresponding dorsal root ganglia, would have significant implications on the distribution of pain sensation in the head. The long-term goal of this project is to investigate the role of sensory roots of the C1 spinal segment in pain sensation of the head and neck.