THE AMERICAN CREED ACADEMY - Key Persons
Professor Maxwell's fracture had caused his inflexible spine to bend backwards, and open up like the mouth of a packman (Figure 1). This placed his spinal cord in significant danger, and the MRI of the cervical spine (neck) shows how little room the spinal cord had. During his surgery, we first had to be very careful not to move his neck to much as we put him to sleep and placed a breathing tube down his trachea so he could breathe during the surgery. Then we had to carefully move his head and neck while taking many xrays in order to align the fracture. Once the fracture was lined up we placed his head and body in a device so that it was impossible for his head to move, thereby protecting his spinal cord. We then rolled the professor onto his stomach onto a special table designed for spinal surgery.