The Derby City Chapter of the National Spinal Cord Injury Association Network- Serving Kentuckiana.
Message From the President
Dear Members & Friends-
June’s meeting will be our dinner at Kingfish Restaurant, 3021 Upper River Road, Louisville, at 6:30 p.m. Meals for dues-paying members will be paid for by the Chapter. Alcoholic beverages will be out-of-pocket. So please come out to Kingfish on Monday, June 18, and join us for fun, fellowship, and good food.
July’s meeting will be held at Frazier Rehab Institute, 220 Abraham Flexner Way, Louisville, in the 10th floor dining room at 6:30 p.m.
- David Allgood
All articles this edition are taken from the Internet-ed
MRI imaging is giving neurosurgeons good insight into whether patients with serious spinal cord injuries can recover, a new study shows.
Within 48 hours of the injury, these images should be able to provide a reasonable prediction of a patient's fate, Canadian researchers reported in the June issue of the journal Radiology.
Currently, MRIs are commonly but inconsistently performed on spinal cord injury patients, noted study co-author Dr. Michael G. Fehlings, professor of neurosurgery at the University of Toronto. In light of the study results, they should become the ìstandard of care, unless pressing medical circumstances preclude the test from being done,î he said.
The U.S. National Spinal Cord Injury Association estimates that between 250,000 to 400,000 Americans now have spinal cord injuries or other spinal cord problems. Motor vehicle accidents are responsible for about 44 percent of spinal cord
injuries in the United States.
In the new study, Fehlings and colleagues examined 100 patients-79 men and 21 women-with severe spinal cord injuries, mostly as a result of motor vehicle accidents. The patients underwent MRI scans that ìallow doctors to see the site of spinal cord injury and to appreciate whether the spine is fractured and whether there is pressure on the spinal cord,î Fehlings said.
His team found that three factors-severity of spinal cord compression, bleeding and spinal cord swelling-were directly connected to poor outcomes. Essentially, the factors indicate a ìmore severe injury with less opportunity for recovery,î Fehlings said.
But the prognosis was good for patients without those symptoms, even if they were severely injured.
In addition to predicting the likelihood of recovery, MRI images can help doctors determine whether patients should undergo spinal cord decompression surgery, Fehlings said.
There is, of course, a potential downside to a bleak prediction: It could leave patients with little hope for the future. But Fehlings said that's not necessarily so.
ìCommunication with patients is an art. It is important for physicians to communicate a sense of hope even in the setting of a severe spinal cord injury,î he said.
