Cervical Plexus and Landmarks in Neck

00:01 So the cervical nerve, cervical plexus - C1, C2, C3, C4 supplies everything else in the head and neck region mainly the muscles and the sensation of the neck. Okay, now if you take your mandible and correspond that to a cervical vertebra; if you’re looking at a CT scan, transverse level, what cervical vertebra will that correspond to? Mandible, the mental prominence? C6.

00:34 C? 6.

00:36 Oh that’s too low. No, go down. C2 Okay, it’s C2.So if you look at C-spine x-ray the hard palate corresponds to the atlas or the C1. Hard palate is C1. Next is the mental prominence, that is C2, then you come down. The next bony prominence, what can you feel in your neck? What’s the next thing you feel? Hyoid bone; that corresponds to C3. Then you come down, what do you feel next? Thyroid cartilage? Thyroid cartilage. What’s the vertebral level of that? C4. Okay, let’s stop at thyroid cartilage. So that’s the thyroid cartilage.

01:19 What are the anatomical significance at that point? Thyroid cartilage, at this level? Bifurcation of the carotids? Bifurcation of the carotids; that’s one of the most important thing. Anything else? Okay. For the purpose of this exam if you remember bifcurcation of the carotid, that’s good enough. You also have the superior ganglion, superior sympathetic ganglion at the C4 level, but bifcurcation of the carotid is fine.

01:48 Then you come down in the midline, next you feel the thyroid notch, a small notch you feel, then you feel a membrane, so that's your cricothyroid membrane, C5. Then you come to the cricoid cartilage, that’s C6. Then you have the tracheal rings, 2, 3, and 4 tracheal rings. So those are your midline structures. What are other structures in the midline? You have the strap muscles. What are the strap muscles in the neck?