What are the initial steps you take when a patient presents with a traumatic spinal cord injury? Trauma patients are worked up in the emergency department through the general surgery trauma team in conjunction with the orthopedic trauma team. Initial management is done under the guidelines of the Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS) protocol, where we recognize and manage potential vital threats...

Trauma to the spinal column may cause a variety of clinical syndromes depending on the type and severity of the impact and bony displacement as well as secondary insults such as hemorrhage, ischemia, and edema. Complete spinal cord injury results in a transverse myelopathy, with total loss of spinal function below the level of the lesion. This insult is caused by either anatomic disruption of t...

Rho GTPases are thought to mediate the action of several axonal growth inhibitors in the adult brain and spinal cord. RhoA has been targeted pharmacologically in both humans and animals to promote neurite outgrowth and functional recovery following CNS trauma. However, rat spinal cord injury studies suggest a complicated and partial benefit of inhibiting Rho or its downstream effector, Rho-asso...

The most common cause of spinal cord injury are high impact trauma, which often result in some motor impairment, sensory or autonomic a greater or lesser extent in the distal areas the level of trauma. In terms of survival and complications due to sequelae, veterinary patients have a poor prognosis unfavorable. Therefore justified the study of experimental models of spinal cord injury productio...

BACKGROUND An increase in the level of intracellular calcium activates the calcium-dependent neutral protease calpain, which in turn leads to cellular dysfunction and cell death after an insult to the central nervous system. In this study, we evaluated the effect of a calpain inhibitor, AK 295, on spinal cord structure, neurologic function, and apoptosis after spinal cord injury (SCI) in a muri...

Improvements in obstetric care have certainly led to a decrease in the incidence of birth related spinal cord trauma but unfortunately it is still encountered from time to time. Its exact incidence is difficult to determine because the spinal cord is not routinely examined in all necropsies. Yates (1959) found evidence of distortional trauma to the cervical spine in 45% of perinatal necropsies....

BACKGROUND Spinal cord injury (SCI) is one of the most devastating conditions leading to neurological impairment and disabilities. The aim of the study was to investigate the potential neuroprotective effect of thymoquinone (TQ) histopathologically in an experimental model of traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI). METHODS Twenty-four male Wistar albino rats were randomly divided into 4 groups: c...

Introduction Conventional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is the best imaging modality to demonstrate ligamentous injury, hematoma, disk herniation, spinal cord edema and hemorrhage that occur following trauma. Quantitative and qualitative image parameters like lesion length, maximum spinal cord compression, spinal cord swelling and, presence of hemorrhage within the cord has been reported to ...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Delayed paraplegia remains a devastating complication after ischemic spinal cord injury associated with aortic surgery and trauma. Although apoptosis has been implicated in the pathogenesis of delayed neurodegeneration, mechanisms responsible for the delayed paraplegia remain incompletely understood. The aim of this study was to elucidate the role of apoptosis in delayed ...