Background on the 3rd International Congress "Restoration of (wheeled) mobility in SCI rehabilitation": state of the art III.

“Restoration of (wheeled) mobility in SCI rehabilitation” was the theme of a recent International Congress in Amsterdam, April 2004. Restoration of mobility in spinal cord injury (SCI) in its ultimate form would be to remove the cause of the mobility limitation, i.e., curing the SCI. Despite a large and basic research effort on neural regeneration on spinal cord repair and on damage preventive— early intervention—strategies [1–2], no cure is available today for spinal cord damage. In contrast to the strong financial research stimuli and the growing expectations on the success of neural repair as a cure for SCI, today’s reality is that SCI is not curable. SCI has long-term and far-fetching consequences for daily functioning and freedom of mobility. As such, an inevitable need exists for applied and basic research into SCI rehabilitation; into its goals, strategies, and practices; and where possible, into new and innovative avenues of care improvement. This need was the focus of the 3rd International Congress “Restoration of (wheeled) mobility in SCI rehabilitation: state of the art III.” The following is a retrospective, both on the evolution of the research work of the research group at the Faculty of Human Movement Sciences in Amsterdam that formed the basis for the program themes as well as a personal opinion on the research issues that are currently evolving from the rehabilitation field within the framework of restoration of mobility.