Introduction

Abstract

Patients with persisting symptoms after a whiplash injury (the so-called late whiplash syndrome) are often left alone. However, their complaints are not only limited to neuropathic pain in the head and neck region, but there are also symptoms, WHICH proceed from the brain. These brain symptoms comprise vertigo, dizziness, tinnitus, concentration, attention, and memory disturbances; also visual problems such as blurred vision and oscillopsia can occur. The whiplash injury is frequent, although only a smaller proportion of the patients develop the late whiplash syndrome. The incidence of whiplash injury in the industrialized countries is estimated up to 3.8 cases per 1,000 inhabitants per year. Rear-end car collisions are the most frequent causes of whiplash injury, and only low speeds between 10 and 20 km/h are necessary to cause large acceleration forces on the head. The usual methods for the diagnosis of whiplash injury – like the neurological investigation or radiography of the cervical spine – unfortunately forget that the brain (alike the cervical spine) can be damaged by an acceleration trauma. Therefore, research methods are necessary, which objectively represent the condition of the brain. Conventional radiological imaging like computerized tomography or magnetic resonance tomography of the brain can, however, only represent the morphological structures and not also the possible functional cerebral alterations, as caused by whiplash injury. By contrast, the relatively new methods of nuclear medicine currently offer the only possibility of imaging such functional changes.

“Arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris

Italiam fato profugus Lavinaque venit

litora – multum ille et terris iactatus et alto

vi superum, saevae memorem Iunonis ob iram,

multa quoque et bello passus, dum conderet urbem

inferretque deos Latio – genus unde Latinum

Albanique patres atque alta moenia Romae.”

- Publius Vergilius Maro (70–19 B.C.), Aeneïs