[Cerebral disturbances following isolated whiplash injury (author's transl)]

During the last decades, possible sequelae of so-called whiplash-injuries have been intensively explored and described by traumatologists and orthopedists. In regard of the neurological symptoms radicular lesions, impairments of the autonomic nervous system at the neck and spinal cord injuries are well known and accepted. Symptoms of cerebral disturbances (e.g. headache, dizziness, disability of concentrating, abnormal irritability and fatigability) often still are considered as "psychoneurotic". In contrast to this opinion, some experimental and clinical neurophysiological research has shown in the meantime, that there may be cerebral damage even in the presence of a normal clinical examination. At first we want to give a review of this findings, then we derive as a consequence for the clinical practice, that in the future all patients should not only be examined neurologically, but the following investigations should also be done: electroencephalography (EEG), otorhinolaryngological examination (with caloric testing of the labyrinth function) and if possible electronystagmography (ENG) and auditory evoked brainstem potentials (AEP).