JUSTIN C.K. DAVIS, M.D.: Hi, my name is Dr. Justin Davis, and today I am going to tell you a little bit about spinal cord injury. Well first of all, what is exactly the spinal cord? The spinal cord goes from the base of the brain and it goes through a canal in the actual spine all the way down to the lower back. The spinal cord is an extremely important organ in your body because it is a nerve that controls many of the functions of the lower part of your body, connecting the lower part of the body and all the nerves in the rest of the body to the brain. Without this, the brain would be unable to send the signals that it needs to, to all of the other parts of the body to make them function properly. So, when you injure the spinal cord, it can be a very serious problem. This became much more well known in 1995 when Christopher Reeves, the silver screen Superman, had a neck injury that injured the spinal cord after falling off a horse, and later, after years of struggling with this very bravely, he died unfortunately in 2004 due to complications from this. So, what are some of the problems associated with spinal cord injury? First of all, it really depends upon where and how severe the spinal cord is injured. Usually, the symptoms that you have are below the side of the injury. Now you can imagine this because the brain is sending signals down the spinal cord and it is able to do so successfully until all of a sudden it gets to a point that it has been damaged and it can do it below that. So for example, if you have a spinal cord injury in the neck, then probably everything up from the neck, so your brain, your eyes, your mouth, will all be okay, but anything below such as being able to move your arms and your legs and perhaps even breathe properly would be affected, whereas if you have an injury that is lower, perhaps in the low back, then may be you will only functions like your legs and bowel function would be affected. Either way, it is not something that anyone wants to happen to them. When all of the limbs of the body are affected we call this quadriplegia, quadra coming from the Latin root "four", but when only the lower part of the body is affected, we call this paraplegia. There are certain things we can do to prevent this, and it is important to prevent because unfortunately, the central nervous system which includes the brain and the spinal cord simply do not have the ability to regenerate like other parts of the body do. So, once it has been permanently damaged, it usually would not grow back or would not become undamaged. Typically, you may not know the extent of injury for, well, perhaps up to even two years sometimes. And after that time, anything that is not functioning properly likely would not begin to function again. So, ways to prevent it, the most common cost of spinal cord injury is automobile accidents, so it is always important to remember to drive safely. Do not drive while you are impaired by drugs or alcohol, and buckle up. Do not forget, not only could you injure yourself, but you may injure your passengers or some other innocent bystander or another driver, so keep that in mind. Also, as you can imagine, there are many other possibilities, how you might injure your spinal cord, and certain diseases can also lead to spinal cord injury such as multiple sclerosis or cancers or anything that may affect the spine. So, if you see somebody that you suspect may have received some kind of neck or spinal cord, for example, a victim of a car accident, there's a few things that are very important to remember. First of all, do not move them. Leave that up to a professional. Sometimes a spinal cord may be on the verge of being injured, but it is not quite injured yet, but any particular movement may make it worse. So it is very important to immobilize these people properly. Also it is important to let someone know right away, because there are certain things that we can do that may limit the amount of the injury, for example giving certain medicines or antioxidants which may make the injury less severe if given immediately. So keep that in mind and be safe when doing anything that could be dangerous or potentially cost harm to yourself or others.
