What is spinal cord injury?
Damage to the spinal cord, a dense network of nerve fibers that connects your brain to nearly every other nerve in your body, results in a spinal cord injury (SCI). These wounds might be small and treatable or serious and irreversible.
One of the two parts of your central nervous system (CNS) is the spinal cord. The nervous system functions similarly to a multilane highway leading to and from the brain, which is the other part of the central nervous system. Your spinal nerves, which are like on-and-off ramps connecting to peripheral nerves that branch out everywhere else in your body, are connected to your spinal cord.
The primary cause of spinal cord injury (SCI) syndrome is trauma; additional causes include progressive spinal cord compression, spinal cord necrosis, demyelination, spinal cord ischemia or hemorrhage, inflammatory damage (myelitis), etc.
Injuries to the spinal cord result in irreversible structural damage and necrosis of the spinal cord tissue. Spinal nerve dysfunction is caused by nerve cell degeneration, necrosis, and loss, and a marked decrease in cell number; as a result, patients are invariably left with permanent disability. There are currently relatively few viable treatments available to help people with spinal cord injury sequelae restore their nerve functions.
Symptoms
Depending on the location and extent of their injuries, patients with SCI may
- Dysregulation of blood pressure, heart rate, and/or body temperature; partial or total loss of sensory and/or motor functions (including respiratory muscle functions); and problems with the bowel, bladder, and sexual system.
- SCI is frequently linked to an increased risk of complications, such as crippling and sometimes fatal secondary diseases including
- Chronic spasticity pain
- Infections of the urinary tract
- Sores caused by pressure
- respiratory issues
- Autonomic dysfunction
- osteoporosis and deep vein thrombosis.
- Additionally, clinical symptoms of depression may appear in people with SCI, which could have a detrimental effect on their general health and functional progress.
The first year following an injury is when the mortality risk is highest and stays high when compared to the general population.
Following a spinal cord injury, two things affect your capacity to control your arms and legs. One issue is the location of the spinal cord lesion. The severity of the injury is the other issue.
The neurological level of the injury is the lowest portion of the spinal cord that remains intact following an injury. The degree to which feeling, or sensation, is gone is referred to as “the completeness” of the injury. Completeness is categorized as:
Whole
A spinal cord injury is considered complete if it results in the loss of all sensation and motor control below the injury site.
Not finished
The injury is referred to as incomplete if some sensation and motor control are still present beneath the injured area. The degree of incomplete injury varies.
Testing and Diagnosis
How is damage to the spinal cord diagnosed?
A spinal cord injury can typically be diagnosed by a medical professional using several techniques, such as:
A physical exam
This is what your healthcare provider does to find hints or proof of the severity of the damage.
a neurological examination
This is what your doctor will do to test certain nervous system functions. This entails assessing your strength, feeling, and reflexes to see if you can move your limbs.
imaging tests
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans and computed tomography (CT) scans are two examples.
diagnostic examinations. Nerve conduction testing and electromyography are two examples of these. By measuring the electrical signals that reach your muscles, they can assist identify signal interference caused by damaged nerves or spinal cords.
Treatment
Pharmacological treatment, early surgery, vigorous volume resuscitation, blood pressure elevation to enhance spinal cord perfusion, early rehabilitation, and cellular treatments are the best ways to treat acute spinal cord injury.
Pharmacological Intervention Yet, no widely recognized pharmaceutical agent exists. The most significant applicants include
Many of the “secondary” events of spinal cord damage are suppressed by glucocorticoids, such as methylprednisolone. These include excitotoxicity, lipid peroxidation, and inflammation. Expert judgments and the findings of randomized clinical trials are incongruous.
The secondary damage mediators are antagonistically affected by thyrotropin-releasing hormone (TRH).
See the article for further details.
Recently, the use of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA), including docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), for the treatment of spinal cord injuries has been investigated.