Patients with cervical spinal cord injury frequently need prolonged mechanical ventilation as a result of worsening pulmonary vital capacity due to paralysis of respiratory muscles, severe impairment of tracheobronchial secretions clearance and high incidence of respiratory complications like pneumonia or atelectasis. Patients with thoracic spinal cord injury may need mechanical ventilation due...

We describe the case of a trauma patient who presented to our emergency department with signs and symptoms suggestive of cervical cord injury. The patient had an underlying ossification of the posterior longitudinal ligament with multiple cervical disc prolapses from C3 to C7. The presence of these two factors increased the impact of the traumatic cervical cord injury. The patient underwent spi...

Spinal cord injury without radiographic abnormality (SCIWORA) usually occurs in the hypermobile, immature cervical spine of young children. In a comatose child, a normal spine x-ray, and CT scan exclude most cases of gross fracture and dislocation, but not SCIWORA. We present 2 children that sustained a polytrauma, which rendered each of them unconscious at the outset. In both, cervical spine x...

The authors report the case of a 24-year-old man who presented with sudden onset quadriplegia while doing a bench press in the supine position. He had a history of cervical disc herniation at the C6/7 level. Plain x-rays showed no spinal fracture and no spinal canal stenosis. MRI revealed a C6/7 disc herniation that severely compressed the spinal cord. Physical exam showed complete spinal cord ...

Cervical spine compression with cervical radicular or cervical spinal cord compression is a common neck condition caused by inflammatory diseases, cervical disk degeneration, neck injuries or other less common causes (tumours, infections etc.). The phosphorylated form of the High-Molecular-Weight Neurofilament Subunit NF-H (pNF-H) in Cerebro-Spinal Fluid (CSF) is a specific biomarker for spinal...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the cardiopulmonary endurance of subjects with spinal cord injury by measuring the maximal oxygen consumption with varying degrees of spinal cord injury level, age, and regular exercise. METHODS We instructed the subjects to perform exercises using arm ergometer on healthy adults at 20 years of age or older with spinal cord injury, and their maximal oxygen consumption (V...

objective: spinal cord injury (sci) causes inflammation, deformity and cell loss. it has been shown that melissa officinalis (mo), as herbal medicine, and dexamethasone (dex) are useful in the prevention of various neurological diseases. the present study evaluated combinational effects of dex and mo on spinal cord injury. materials and methods: thirty six adult male wistar rats were used in th...

Cervical spinal cord injury at birth permanently disrupts forelimb function in goal-directed reaching. Transplants of fetal spinal cord tissue permit the development of skilled forelimb use and associated postural adjustments (, companion article). The aim of this study was to determine whether transplants of fetal spinal cord tissue support the remodeling of supraspinal and segmental pathways ...

the initial experience concerning the use of magnetic resonance imaging in 94 patients who had sustained chronic cord injury showed its specific advantages over traditional imaging modalities. a variety of 84 cord abnormalities were identified including myelomalacia in 47%, cord cysts in 37%, focal atrophy in 11 % and cord transection in 5%. canal stenosis was seen in twenty-five patients, elev...