Alok Jha 

How did a man walk around with a broken neck for so long?

Broken necks can be hard to spot because often they are so subtle, a fact 83-year-old RAF hero Bill Boyd is now taking in.
  
  


Broken necks can be hard to spot because often they are so subtle, a fact 83-year-old RAF hero Bill Boyd is now taking in. He went to hospital after a minor car crash only to be told that he had been walking around with a broken neck for 62 years. Boyd thinks he might have sustained the injury when he parachuted out of a burning Lancaster bomber during a raid over Germany in 1943.

David Harrison, a consultant spinal surgeon at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital in Stanmore, says spinal injuries can be missed because the people who suffer them don't think they've done themselves much harm. "Sometimes people think they've had a whiplash and the more stoical of us might say, 'I'll soldier on, it's getting better.'"

Neck injuries can also be missed by doctors because they are not obvious on x-rays. These overlooked injuries can heal themselves and cause no lasting harm, but not always.

"If there's an injury with potential for severe displacement, then another insult - a secondary fall or someone attempting to treat or manipulate the spine - might displace it to a point where nerve injury can occur," says Harrison.

In Boyd's case, there is clearly a neck injury. But the idea that it was caused 62 years ago might not be correct. "I viewed the [story] with a little bit of scepticism because I thought it could have happened any time within the last five years and [Boyd's] memory might not be so perfect for some fall, knock or twist," says Harrison. Elderly people most commonly injure their neck in a fall, he adds.

But some doctors think that Boyd's spine must have partially healed itself while he was in a German prison, locked in a tiny cell and unable to move for long periods.

"Whenever his injury occurred, it has come into a naturally stable position and a situation when he wasn't in enforced labour or doing everyday activities would have led to a situation which was more likely to get stable," says Harrison.

 

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