Regeneration and Outcome Measures in Spinal Cord Injury

ABSTRACT

Spinal cord injury (SCI) often results in devastating neurological dysfunction. Therefore many of the SCI patients suffer with physical disabilities or social handicaps. Many obstacles have been known to affect adult spinal cord regeneration and functional recovery. However, scientific knowledge of the central nervous system (CNS) development and post-injury responses including pathophysiology of SCI has been expanded recently, which might produce potential promising therapies for this condition. These are as followed; (1) pharmacological neuroprotective agents, (2) administration of exogenous neurotrophic factors or augmenting intraneural cyclic AMP, (3) inhibition of nonpermissive environment of the injured spinal cord, (4) cellular transplantation, and (5) rehabilitation interventions with body-weight supported treadmill therapy and functional electrical stimulation. In addition, the precise evaluation of functional improvement or gait is also important in rehabilitation of SCI patients. Various evaluation tools have been developed and introduced in order to estimate a degree of improvement properly.