ABSTRACT
It is well known that injuries, mechanisms, tolerance and risk functions are modulated by various factors related to the occupant and loading scenario. Injury mechanisms and tolerance in the thoracolumbar spine was shown to be dependent on a number of variables including acceleration versus time characteristics and posture. The rostral migration of injuries seen in some descriptive ejection studies compared to the thoracolumbar junction concentration in civilian populations may be due to differences in these anatomical and environmental parameters. Component-level spine studies were conducted to identify the injuries, injury mechanisms and injury metrics which can be used to understand the dynamic biomechanics of human dorsal spine and define tolerance and injury criteria from tests on upper and lower thoracic and lumbar spinal columns. Recent literature has highlighted an increased risk of thoracic and lumbar spine injury in military environments, given high number of land-based vehicle underbelly (UB) blast events that have occurred during current military conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
