What is Nontraumatic Spinal Cord Injury?

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Any damage to the spinal cord that has not been caused by a major trauma may led to Nontraumatic Spinal Cord Injury. It occurs when spinal cord has been damaged in other ways such as infection, loss of blood supply, compression by a cancer or through slow degeneration of the spinal bones (vertebrae) such as in osteoarthritis.

The spinal cord acts as a connector between the brain and the body; the brain sends signals out through nerves that run down the spinal cord, and from there other nerves go out into the body. These control things like movement of muscles, but also other functions such as sweating, urination and defecation. The body also sends signals up through the spinal cord to the brain via other nerves giving information about touch, temperature, position and pain. The brain can no longer send or receive information to or from the parts of the body if spinal cord gets injured. In a nontraumatic spinal injury, something has happened that has stopped the connection between spinal cord and brain.

Causes

Causes of NTSCI can be divided into five categories:

Vascular: This makes up about 25% of all NTSCI and these causes are due to things that involve blood and the blood vessels.

Neoplastic (Cancerous): This makes up another 25% of all NTSCI. Around 5% of all cancers can lead to spinal cord compression, either from local cancers in the bone or cord or having spread (metastasised) from another location. The most common cancers that spread to the spine are lung, breast, prostate, lymphoma, thyroid or melanoma.

Inflammatory and Infections: These account for about 20% of all NTSCI injuries. Damage is from big masses of inflammatory cells or localised areas of infection.

Degenerative: These conditions are due to general breakdown due to wear and tear or other damaging process occurring to the bones and accounts for about 18% of all NTSCI.

Other: There are also many other conditions that cause NTSCI, and these make up the remaining 12% of cases.

Neurological:

Transverse Myelitis

Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis

Friedreich’s Ataxia

Multiple Sclerosis

Some genetic and metabolic diseases

Problems arising from birth or through early development:

Cerebral Palsy

Spina Bifida

Toxins and medications:

Methotrexate

Cytosine Arabinoside

Radiation

Treatment

The main treatment for patients with NTSCI is rehabilitation in a major hospital or other main health centre. This is done somewhere that specialises in rehabilitation of NTSCI, and this is often joined with specialists in traumatic spinal injury into a ‘spinal care unit’.

In rehabilitation there are several key aspects. These include education about coping with the injury and prevention of complications, specialised wheelchair and seating prescription and bladder training. This will be combined with physiotherapy designed to keep the muscles working and other treatments to make patients as independent as possible.

The Spinal Cord Injury Program at AVA Rehabilitation Center offers the most comprehensive rehabilitation program.


Location: Thrissur, Kerala, India

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