The importance of the cricoid cartilage as an anatomic land mark of cervical level

Abstract

BackgroundWe aimed to evaluate the correlation of the changes radiologically in the vertebral level of the cricoid cartilage according to age and gender to reduce the application difficulties and complication rates in cervical region nerve blockades and surgeries.ResultsThe mean age of all patients included in the study was 56.06 ± 17.22 years. We observed that while the line drawn from the cricoid cartilage to the vertebral column level passed over the C6 transverse process in women, it was below the C6 transverse process in men. A significant difference was also observed between the vertebral corpus level according to gender (p < 0.001). We could not find a significant difference between the transverse process and corpus level according to age.ConclusionsWe found a significant difference according to gender in the correlation of the cervical vertebra transverse process and corpus with the cricoid cartilage line which are two important levels frequently used in clinical practice to ensure successful and non-complicated blockage.