Cervical spine injuries result primarily from motor vehicle accidents, sports activities, and diving into shallow water. These mainly happen with young people. In older people, falls are a common cause. And such injuries can cause a range of complications from pain to radiculopathy to other neurological disability.

So what if anything can we do to ensure that cervical spine trauma is diagnosed and managed correctly?

To answer this and other important questions, listen to this interview with Michael Fehlings, Professor of Neurosurgery at the University of Toronto, and author of our BMJ Best Practice topic on this condition.

Competing interests: MGF served as a consultant for Zimmer, In Vivo Therapeutics, and Pfizer. He receives institutional fellowship grant support from AOSpine, Medtronic, and Depuy-Synthes.