Pediatric neck injury scale factors and tolerance.

Although significant research efforts have been made to determine the tolerance for the adult neck, relatively little research has been conducted to derive the pediatric neck injury parameters. The existing approach to determine injury for the one, three and six year old pediatric populations is based on extrapolations from the adult male and calcaneal tendon tensile data. This study addresses the scale factors for pediatric age groups using data obtained from spinal components and neck geometry. The analysis included the determination of scale factors under extension, tension, compression and flexion loading modes as a function of age. The variations in biomechanical properties of each spinal component were determined from human cadaver studies. Active spinal components were identified under each loading mode and relationships were established for each component to obtain material-based scale factors. The scale factors and resulting injury tolerance values based on spine component material properties are more appropriate than values extrapolated from the calcaneal tendon.