What are the most common causes of spinal cord contusion? Most spinal cord contusion injuries are the result of highimpact motor vehicle accidents. However, athletes can sustain this injury as a result of contact while playing. Fortunately, the number of serious incidents involving spinal cord injury is low. That being said, more orthopedists are beginning to function as the team physician duri...

Background: The incidence of concurrent traumatic brain injury (TBI) and cervical spine (c-spine) is relatively high, with a variety risk factors. Objectives: purpose this study was to determine the related factors associated combined cranial c-spine in TBI patients by assessing their demographics clinical profiles. Method: A retrospective attending Trauma Centre at Inkosi Albert Luthuli Hospit...

The measurement of cerebral blood flow (CBF) in traumatic brain injury (TBI) by means of Xenon-CT (XeCT) has been part of the clinical practice of several centres since 1980. Xe-CT consists of a CBF image coupled with CT which offers the possibility to associate morphologic features given by CT with functional information. Today, Xe-CT, in association with Positron Emission Tomography (PET), re...

From 1998 to 2008 we noticed 3 cardiac deaths in male teenagers aged 18-19 during or after physical exercise. The first was working at the site recreatively, the second was engaged in soccer recreatively and the third was professional soccer player. One felt general tiredness and was exhausted of a heavily physical effort, the other after physical exercise became septic and the third was withou...

Fifty five patients suffering from blunt chest trauma were studied to assess the diagnosis of myocardial contusion using thallium 201 myocardial scintigraphy. Thirty-eight patients had consistent scintigraphic defects and were considered to have a myocardial contusion. All patients with scintigraphic defects had paroxysmal arrhythmias and/or ECG abnormalities. Of 38 patients, 32 had localized S...

The aim of the present study was to ascertain whether brain cooling causes attenuation of traumatic brain injury by reducing brain nitrostative and oxidative damage. Brain cooling was accomplished by infusion of 5 mL of 4°C saline over 5 minutes via the external jugular vein. Immediately after the onset of traumatic brain injury, rats were randomized into two groups and given 37°C or 4°C normal...

We provide the first data that cathepsin B (Cath B), a lysosomal cysteine protease, is up-regulated following contusion-spinal cord injury (SCI). Following T12 laminectomy and moderate contusion, Cath B mRNA and protein expression profiles were examined from 2 to 168 h post-injury in rats using real-time PCR and immunoblots, respectively. Contusion injury significantly increased [mRNA]Cath B in...

BACKGROUND Cardiac contusion is an important cause of mortality after blunt chest trauma (BCT). The aim of this study was to investigate the therapeutic efficacy of the usage of aminoguanidine (AG), in myocardial damage occurring after BCT, alone and in combination with methylprednisolone (MP). METHODS Thirty-five female Wistar albino rats were randomly assigned to five groups (n = 7) includi...