FAQ for SCI: Some Frequently Asked Questions about Spinal Cord Injury
BruceBlaus, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
We briefly tackled what an SCI is on the Resources for SCI page, but here’s a bit more in-depth information.
To recap: the spinal cord can be thought of as an extension of your brain – it is made of nerve tissue that runs from the base of your skull to your lower back, carrying signals from the brain to the rest of your body (and vice-versa). I like to think of it as a main highway, and the nerves that stem from the spinal cord act as highway exits. The spinal cord is protected by your spine, which surrounds the spinal cord with a bony tunnel. The bony tunnel is also called the spinal canal.
What is NOT a spinal cord injury?
You can feel the spine as it starts at the base of your head (the “top part” of your neck) and as you run your hand down the middle of your back you can feel that stack of individual bones (called vertebrae) that form the bony tunnel enclosing the spinal cord. Neck pain and back pain are not spinal cord injuries. Neck and back pain can be signals that there may be something wrong with your spine, or the muscles surrounding the spine.
An injury to the spine does not necessarily mean you have a spinal cord injury. However, if something (tumor, herniated disk, infection, bullet fragment, knife blade, etc.) enters that bony tunnel and cuts or presses against the spinal cord – then you have a spinal cord injury.
What causes a spinal cord injury?
Spinal cord injuries can happen in one of two major ways: traumatic and non-traumatic. A traumatic SCI occurs as a result of a sudden accident: for example – falls, motor vehicle accident, stuff falling on you, gunshot or stab wounds. A non-traumatic injury is everything else: an infection, a tumor, degenerative disease (i.e., diseases of old age), fluid buildup in the spinal canal, etc. The damage from a traumatic or non-traumatic spinal cord injury may be instant or progressive, depending on the disease and disease process.
How can a Rehabilitation Medicine physician (physiatrist) help patients with spinal cord injury?
After appropriate treatment by another physician – often a neurologist, neurosurgeon or orthopedic surgeon – a patient can be referred to a Rehabilitation physician for further management.
The most obvious problem after a spinal cord injury is the loss of movement in a person’s limbs. Yet there may also be problems in controlling bowel movements, urination, muscle spasms, skin breakdown from pressure ulcers (also known as bed sores) and pain – just to name the major complications after a spinal cord injury; there are others! A physiatrist looks at all these (“the big picture”) and more, and helps the patient figure out what can be done to make quality of life better for the patient: this includes (but not limited to) referrals to appropriate rehabilitation therapists, prescriptions for equipment, medications to address the medical complications.
How often should a spinal cord injury patient see a Rehabilitation Medicine physician?
A patient’s medical issues of a patient need to be monitored closely in the first year after a spinal cord injury, because the body is still in a period of adjustment and constantly changing. After the first year the body settles down a bit more and follow up visits with a rehabilitation physician can be spaced out to annual check-ups. Of course, if the patient has new issues that come up before the yearly visit, he or she should come to the clinic sooner.
I’m planning to write more details about the medical complications forthcoming blog posts, with the first one here. Stay tuned!
