If you have recently had a spinal cord injury, it may seem like every aspect of your life has been affected. You may feel the effects of your injury mentally, emotionally and socially.

Numerous researchers are hopeful that progresses in examination will sometime make fixing spinal rope injuries conceivable. Research studies are underway worldwide. Meanwhile, treatments and rehabilitation allow many people with spinal cord injuries to lead productive, independent lives.

Types of spinal cord injuries

Spinal cord injuries can be complete or incomplete (partial):

• Complete: a complete injury that causes complete paralysis (loss of function) below the level of the injury. It affects both sides of the body. A complete injury may paralyze all four limbs (quadriplegia) or the lower half of the body (paraplegia).
• Incomplete: After an incomplete injury, some functions remain on one or both sides of the body. The body and the brain can still communicate along certain pathways.

What are the symptoms of a spinal cord injury?

A portion of the manifestations of a spinal cord injury include:

• Problems with walking
• Loss of bladder or bowel control
• Inability to move arms or legs
• Feeling of numbness or tingling in the extremities
• Unconsciousness
• Headache
• Pain, weight and solidness in the back or neck
• Signs of shock
• Abnormal head position

What are the causes of spinal cord injury?

The most well-known reason for a spinal cord injury is truma. Almost half of the injuries are caused by car accidents. Other types of trauma include:

• falls from heights
• Violence (stab wounds or gunshot wounds to the spine)
• Sports injuries (diving, soccer, rugby, equestrian, etc.).

Spinal cord injury can also be caused by cord compression due to a tumor, infection, or inflammation. Some patients have a smaller than normal spinal canal (called spinal stenosis) and are at higher risk of spinal cord injury.

All tissues of the body, including the spinal cord, require a good supply of blood to deliver oxygen and other nutrients. Failure of this blood to reach the spinal cord can result in a spinal cord injury. This can be caused by an aneurysm (distended blood vessel), compression of a blood vessel or a prolonged low blood pressure.

How is a spinal cord injury diagnosed?

In an emergency, the health care provider makes sure that the spinal cord injury does not affect your breathing or your heart rate. Next, they'll survey how well your nerves are functioning. Provider checks:

• Engine work, or your capacity to move portions of your body.
• Sensory function, or your ability to sense touch.

Certain imaging tests can help analyze a spinal cord injury:

• A computerized tomography scan (CT scan) to see broken bones, blood clots, or damage to blood vessels.
• Magnetic resonance imaging, to see the spinal cord or soft tissues.
• X-rays, to show a broken or dislocated bone (bone spurs out of place).

A health care provider may also use an electromyogram (EMG) to check electrical activity in muscles and nerve cells if peripheral nerve injury is present. (An electromyogram is usually not necessary in a spinal cord injury.)

Treatment for Spinal Cord Injury

Immediately after a spinal cord injury, the individual is placed on a back plate with a neck brace to help stabilize the spine. No one should move the individual unless he is proficient in precautions that protect the spine from further injury. A spinal cord injury can be life-threatening and requires emergency treatment.

In the emergency room, two of the first tests will be an MRI or CT scan to verify an image of the spine and a physical examination. The aftereffects of these tests will control the treatment. If your spinal cord is unstable, which means that the bony vertebrae are unable to protect it, surgery may be performed right away to stabilize it. Surgery often consists of rods or plates to hold the bones together. If there are injuries or other medical problems, spine surgery may be delayed until your life is stable.

After surgery, a stay will usually be in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) where rehabilitation treatment will continue to the appropriate level. This will consist of the movement applied to the body and safety precautions. There may also be some functional electrical stimulation (FES) to provide input to nerves and muscles below the level of the injury. Versatile hardware will be given to look after skin, inside and bladder work.

From the intensive care unit, the individual will be transferred to an inpatient nursing unit or directly to a rehab facility where recovery will continue. Treatment progress is being made with an improvement that can either be an improvement within your body or an improvement with adaptive equipment.

The next step is to move into the home or place you will live in. The rehabilitation process will continue through outpatient treatment, home treatment, or an independent therapy program. Lifelong treatment is needed to keep your job and continue improving. You may need to continue treatment on your own, without attending a therapist, but keeping up with activity is important for your treatment for life.

The nervous system has been determined to be plastic, which means it will adapt to the changes it undergoes. Maintaining your health is important to improving function and preparing for future treatments when available.

What’s the long-term outlook?

A few people lead full and profitable lives after a spinal cord injury. However, there are potentially dire effects of spinal cord injury. The vast majority of people will need assistive devices such as walkers or wheelchairs to deal with motion loss, and some may be paralyzed from the neck down.

You may require help with exercises of day by day living and figure out how to perform assignments in an unexpected way. Weight wounds and urinary parcel diseases are normal inconveniences. You may also expect to undergo intensive spinal cord injury rehabilitation treatment.

Prevention

The main causes of spinal cord injury are road accidents, falls, and violence (including attempted suicide). A large proportion of traumatic spinal cord injuries are due to work or sports injuries. Effective interventions are available to prevent many of the main causes of spinal cord injury, including improvements in roads, vehicles and the behavior of people on the roads to avoid road traffic accidents, window guards to prevent falls, and policies to thwart the harmful use of alcohol and access to firearms to reduce violence.

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