Sebastian Decker, Christine Noll, Frank Hildebrand, Christian Krettek, Christian W. Müller

• Introduction: The incidence of trauma-related cervical-spine fractures is 19-88 / 100.000. In contrast, the incidence of cervical spine injuries is as high as 19% - 51% of all spinal trauma. Cervical spine injuries in non-polytrauma patients are rare. However, due to the potential damage to the spinal cord these traumata are feared and mustn't be missed. Cervical spine injuries represent the highest reported early mortality rate of all spinal trauma. The rate of functional impairment afterwards is high and the rate of reintegration into work is low compared to other organ systems. In the past, trauma surgeons often did x-rays of the cervical spine with low inhibition threshold and often without strong clinical suggestion for vertebral or discoligamental injuries. This practice was queried by the Canadian C-Spine rule and extensively discussed in the past. Therefore we did a retrospective study whether non-polytrauma patients benefit from cervical spine x-rays.