A child in the second grade began a long journey to seek medical help after falling into a coma at the nursery with a cold and fever at the age of 4.5. After undergoing many tests and suffering from headaches, dizziness and abdominal pain, his small body could not be diagnosed and cured until he was more than 7 years old when he discovered that his cervical spine was misaligned, causing a series of discomfort. The cervical spine disease only occurs in the middle-aged and old people, but a 7-year-old child can also be cervical spine misalignment? The reporter learned from the chiropractic experts of the Department of Rehabilitation of the First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical College that the youngest patient here is only 2 and a half years old! The director of the department, Shen Tong, told reporters that he has seen half of the patients with cervical spine misalignment adolescents and half of the middle-aged and elderly! The 7-year-old child had headaches and dizziness for 3 years before he realized his cervical spine was misaligned. Chengcheng (a pseudonym), who lives in Foshan, had a very common fever when he was 4 and a half years old, which made him start another kind of painful life. The parents took him to a large local hospital for an EEG and MRI for insurance purposes, but no abnormalities were found. Unexpectedly, three months later, the child began to experience headaches, dizziness and abdominal pain. It was at this time that the painful road to medical treatment began for the Chengcheng family. Ms. Su, Chengcheng’s mother, first took the child to a larger hospital in Guangzhou, and after examination, the doctor recommended that the child be wormed first. After taking the worming medicine, the child did not see any worm discharge, and the headache, dizziness and abdominal pain remained. The doctor then recommended ultrasound, EEG and MRI, but again no abnormalities were found. Later, he was referred to the Department of Pediatric Neurology, where he was diagnosed with inflammation of the maxillary and septal sinuses, and was treated for 3 months without success. He was also diagnosed with “cerebrovascular spasm” by the child neurology department, and took several courses of antispasmodic drugs in vain. He was diagnosed with “abdominal pain epilepsy” and was advised to take medication for 3-5 years. The parents were more cautious and went to another major hospital, where the doctor denied the diagnosis of “abdominal pain epilepsy” and diagnosed it as “vegetative neurosis”. After taking the medication, the child had pains every morning before school, and when she entered the second grade, her condition developed to two or three times a week, with pains for 1-2 hours each time, and school became a problem. The cause of the disease could not be found, and the child was tortured and disfigured, while the parents suffered from both mental and monetary pressure all day long. At the suggestion of a neurologist at Guangzhou Children’s Hospital, Ms. Su took her child to a cervical spine specialist at the Rehabilitation Department of Guangzhou Medical College Hospital and finally found the cause of the problem – the “open mouth” photo. The photos showed that there was a misalignment between the first and second sections of the child’s cervical spine, which was probably caused by the child’s fall when he was 4.5 years old. After a week of continuous medication, massage and traction, the misalignment of the child’s cervical spine was reset, and the symptoms of headache, dizziness and abdominal pain disappeared, and the child will only need to be reviewed once a year in the summer. Adolescents with cervical spine misalignment are most likely to be misdiagnosed and missed. It took three years to cure the disease, which was diagnosed as six different diseases after running around to five hospitals, and it was a difficult experience for Chengcheng. However, the reporter found in the rehabilitation department that there are few children like Chengcheng. He Huilian, deputy chief physician of the department, said that the proportion of cervical spondylosis in adolescents is increasing, accounting for about 10% of the patients she treats, and the true proportion should be greater because many parents do not realize that their children’s cervical spine has problems and fail to seek timely medical attention, resulting in misdiagnosis and omission. Associate Professor Shen Tong believes that it is not that these experts are not up to par, but that they know too little about cervical spondylosis! First of all, modern medicine is so detailed that experts in various specialties are only familiar with the diagnosis and treatment of difficult diseases in this specialty, and a clinical symptom of a disease (such as headache) may be a manifestation of many diseases, so it is not surprising that experts have misdiagnosed the disease; secondly, according to the “accepted standard” of the diagnosis of cervical spondylosis in current medical textbooks. The disease is a disease of the middle-aged and elderly, and the diagnosis can be confirmed only when “degenerative changes (hyperplasia, bone spurs)” are seen on X-ray, which only appear with age. Therefore, many teenagers have symptoms of cervical spondylosis but are denied because no “degenerative changes” are seen in the bone at the time of the photograph. He said: In recent years, domestic and foreign research has concluded that the main cause of cervical spondylosis is not degenerative changes such as “bone spurs and hyperplasia”, but the small joints of the cervical spine are misaligned, and there is no uniform standard for misalignment in radiology, so cervical spondylosis is often misdiagnosed in adults, not to mention adolescents! Sleeping in a car, poor sitting and standing posture are prone to cervical spine misalignment. Cervical spondylosis is not hard to get but hard to find, experts believe that bad habits are the main cause of cervical misalignment. Shen Tong said that children have many bad habits can lead to the occurrence of cervical dislocation, such as sleeping on their stomachs at night, improper pillow height, sleeping in a car, etc., because the neck muscles relax during sleep, the protection of the cervical spine is weakened, prone to small joint dislocation. In addition, many children with cervical spondylosis usually have the habit of tilting their heads, they like to tilt their heads when doing homework, watching TV, or sitting without sitting, such as sitting with their necks propped up on the sofa, over time also prone to small joint dislocation. In addition, head and neck injuries from falls and bruises are also the main causes of misalignment. If parents find that their children have common symptoms of cervical spondylosis and a history of falls and bruises, they need to pay special attention to them. Many times when the misalignment is not serious, it does not cause discomfort, but due to poor posture and other triggers, the misalignment is further aggravated and the symptoms appear when the nerves and blood vessels next to the cervical spine are compressed. If a child has symptoms of cervical spondylosis, he or she should seek early consultation with a cervical spine specialist to avoid delaying the condition. The experts reminded that parents should pay attention to the fact that the increasing weight of school bags can also induce cervical spondylosis Special reminder that cervical spondylosis is related to half a dozen diseases Director Shen especially pointed out that many symptoms of cervical spondylosis are easily confused with other diseases and should be distinguished. In fact, the symptoms of cervical spondylosis in adolescents are not very different from those in adults, and their common symptoms include neck pain, headache, dizziness, chest tightness, upper limb numbness, insomnia, etc. These symptoms may appear separately or together, and some people may only have upper limb numbness or severe insomnia, but not the most likely symptoms of cervical spondylosis, such as neck pain, so doctors and patients often do not consider it to be a problem of the cervical spine. Some time ago, Director Shen saw a 3-year-old girl who came to the rehabilitation department because of severe insomnia at a young age. The girl’s mother told the doctor that the child woke up more than 50 times every night, and the lack of sleep made the child lethargic for a long time, and her resistance was significantly reduced. After examination, Prof. Shen found that the girl’s 2 and 3 cervical vertebrae were misaligned, which stimulated the sympathetic ganglion next to the cervical vertebrae and led to plant nerve dysfunction, causing insomnia. After the child was treated with two manipulations to reset the misaligned cervical vertebrae, the child’s sleep improved significantly, waking up at most two or three times a night, and her physique was quickly restored.