Don’t be scared by “positive signs”! When many cervical spine patients come to the specialist’s office, they often hear the specialist say to the student, “See, this patient is strongly positive.” At this point many patients are often so scared that their blood runs cold and they immediately panic and ask: “What’s positive? Am I going to die?” In fact, what we call “positive” or “negative” is just an indicator that allows the doctor to locate and judge the severity of the disease during the physical examination. In spine surgery clinics, there is often this thing called the “Hoffman sign”. What exactly is the Hoffman sign? Hoffmann’s sign is a cone bundle sign of the upper extremity. The test is to hold the patient’s wrist with the left hand and make the wrist joint slightly dorsiflexed and the fingers lightly flexed, the doctor holds the distal interphalangeal joint of the patient’s middle finger with the index and middle fingers of the right hand and quickly scrapes the patient’s middle fingernail with the thumb downward. Do you understand? Actually, I don’t understand it either. But look at this chart and you will understand: If your cervical spondylosis is very serious, when your middle finger is scraped like this, your thumb will involuntarily contract. This is called “Hoffman’s sign positive”. A positive Hoffman’s sign is only a minor diagnostic sign in clinical practice and does not have much diagnostic significance when isolated. It is important to follow the doctor’s instructions when visiting the clinic, so don’t let a “positive” scare you out of your wits.