Real-Time Detection of Periforaminal Vessels in the Cervical Spine
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Compared with the thoracic and lumbar spine, transforaminal epidural injections and medial branch blocks in the cervical spine are associated with a higher incidence of neurological complications. Accidental breach of small periforaminal arteries has been implicated in many instances. In this observational study, using ultrasonography, we surveyed the incidence of periforaminal bloods vessels in the cervical spine. METHODS: Patients undergoing ultrasound-guided cervical medial branch blocks were scanned using color power and pulsed wave Doppler. Five levels from C2/C3 to C6/C7 were studied. Incidental blood vessels located between the anterior tubercles of the transverses process and the posterior borders of the articular pillars were included for analysis. We recorded the diameter and position of arteries relative to contiguous bony landmarks as well the number of veins. RESULTS: In 102 patients, we performed a total 201 scans (1005 cervical levels). Of the 363 incidental vessels identified, 238 were arteries (mean diameter, 1.25 ± 0.45 mm). The latter were most commonly found at the posterior foraminal aspects of C5, C6, and C7 (13%, 11%, and 16% of scans, respectively); the transverse processes of C5 and C6 (10% and 16% of scans, respectively); and the articular pillars of C6 and C7 (19% and 16% of scans, respectively). CONCLUSIONS: Small periforaminal arteries are prevalent along the lateral aspect of the cervical spine, adjacent to areas commonly targeted by nerve block procedures. Further trials are required to determine if ultrasound guidance can reduce the incidence of complications related to accidental vascular breach.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".