Spinal Ligaments and Tendons

Ligaments (lig-ah-ments) connect bone to bone and Tendons (ten-duns) attach muscle to bone. Ligaments and tendons are fibrous connective tissues made up of densely packed collagen fibers. Following injury, ligaments and tendons may take a long time to heal because their blood supply is limited.

In the spine, ligaments help to provide structural stability.There are two primary ligament systems in the spine, the intrasegmental and intersegmental systems. The intrasegmental system holds individual vertebrae together. The intrasegmental system includes the ligamentum flavum (lig-ah-men-tum flay-vum), interspinous (inter-spy-nus) and intertransverse (inter-tranz-verse) ligaments. The intersegmental system holds many vertebrae together. The intersegmental system includes the anterior and posterior longitudinal ligaments, and the supraspinous (sue-pra-spine-us) ligaments.

Ligaments of the Spine

This article is an excerpt from a book titled Save Your Aching Back and Neck, A Patient's Guide (Second Edition, May 2002, completely revised).