Cervical Traction for the Treatment of Spinal Injury and Deformity.

Abstract

As early as the 4th century BCE, Hippocrates described spinal traction as a treatment for kyphotic deformity1. His invention, the scamnum, was a device composed of ropes attached to windlasses that produced traction on the body. This device was used for the treatment of fractures and deformity into the 17th century1. In the 1600s, the German surgeon Fabricius Hildanus described a method for reducing cervical fracture-dislocations by combining traction with open reduction. With this method, the patient was positioned on a stretching bench to extend the cervical spine, after which the surgeon made an incision to expose and grasp the spinous process with forceps. The dislocated vertebrae were then manipulated into physiological alignment2. While spinal traction techniques did not evolve further until the 20th century, the understanding of spinal anatomy and biomechanics improved during this period, providing the foundation for many of the developments in spinal traction and instrumentation that would occur in the modern era. In 1929, Taylor introduced the halter device as a method …