Dirty dancing can be a pain in the neck.

Dirty dancing can be a pain in the neck

It's sinful, it's sexy, it's the latest dance fad -- and just might break your neck.

As the Latin American inspired dance called the lambada sweeps northward, physicians from Miami to Montreal are beginning to see female patients with "lambada fractures" -- broken vertabrae at the base of the neck. The breaks appear to result from the floor-grazing backbends performed by the female partner in this groin-grinding dance.

In a letter published in the March 21 NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE, three physicians from the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal caution fellow doctors to be alert for lambada fractures. Liane Phipotts Thomson, Lawrence A. Stein and William W. Fish report the case of a 24-year-old professional lambada dancer who came to them the day after a performance complaining of a sore neck. An X-ray showed the women had broken off one of the spiny projections from her seventh cervical vertebra. The break had caused the natural bend in her neck to straighten out painfully. The doctors fitted her with a soft collar brace and told to stay off the dance floor for four to six weeks.

The Montreal team suggests the injury arose from the patient's "frequent forceful flexions and extensions of her neck, along with controlled backward drops to the floor." The point to similar injuries suffered in the mid-1980s by breakdancers who spun on their heads.