Neck artery injuries in grappling, explained.
If it’s the middle of the night and you just got diagnosed with a carotid or vertebral artery dissection — or you’re scared you might have one — take a breath. You are not the only grappler this has happened to, and this site was built by someone who has been exactly where you are.
Start here
- Injury types What a dissection is and how each artery gets hurt — carotid and vertebral, in plain language.
- Warning signs When to seek emergency care, and exactly what to say in the emergency department.
- Recovery Survivors’ own timelines and return-to-training experiences — labeled as lived experience, not guidance.
- The registry Browse anonymized cases or share your own. Human-moderated, nothing identifying, nothing auto-published.
What this site is
A plain-language guide to cervical arterial dissection — injuries to the carotid and vertebral arteries in the neck — as they show up in Brazilian jiu-jitsu and other grappling sports. It also hosts an anonymized public registry of real cases, so injured grapplers, coaches, and clinicians can finally see the patterns instead of guessing from one-off forum threads.
Everything here is educational. Nothing here is medical advice, and nothing here can tell you what is safe for your body — those decisions belong to you and your medical team.
Why a registry?
Cervical arterial dissection in grappling is rarely studied and easy to miss. Most of what injured grapplers can find is scattered case reports and forum posts. The registry collects anonymized, moderated reports in one place — mechanism, artery, treatment, outcome — so patterns become visible. Every case is submitted voluntarily, stripped of anything identifying, and published only after human review.
Registry at a glance
1 published case report
Cases by mechanism
Cases by artery segment
Time until return to training
Among the 1 case reporting a return to training. Individual circumstances vary widely — this is history, not guidance.