How We Use Dermatomes to Diagnose Spine Injuries

Now we’re looking at a dermatome chart.
Now dermatomes are the patches of skin
that have very specific nerve roots that
intervate them. So for instance, if a
patient comes in, they say, “Dr. Matt, I
have numbness and tingling in my thumb
and my first two fingers.” Well, if we
look at the dermatome chart, you can see
that the thumb is actually innervated by
the sixth nerve in the cervical spine in
your neck. The next nerve below that is
going to be the C7 nerve and it controls
these two fingers. And so just like when
you look at that electrical panel in
your house and you have a switch that
goes to the bedroom or the kitchen has a
very specific pathway, our bodies are
actually built much the same way. And
when a spinal region like the neck gets
injured from an accident, we can tell
exactly where that nerve is going to
intervate and cause the symptom with the
numbness in the fingers or the toes. And
we use diagnostic imaging to confirm all
that information so we can tell a
patient exactly what area of their spine
was injured and which areas we need to
treat.