Articles from prior issues of The Advocate

November/December, 1999

Spinal Cord Injuries - More Than Just A Physical Disability
by Donna Jo Hausman, Colorado DDS

DR. DANIEL LAMMERTSE, MD a Denver neurologist who works with spinal cord injuries provided new insight on spinal cord patients.

Dr. Lammertse currently works at Craig Hospital in Denver, CO which is a rehabilitation hospital. He works directly with spinal cord injured patients and their rehabilitation. Of interest, while Dr Lammertse was doing his internship in the 70's, he worked as a DDS medical consultant in the Columbus, Missouri DDS from 1978-1979.

Spinal cord injuries are not just a physical disability, but more organ damage and physiologic disruption. It disrupts the somatic nerve system, autonomic nerve systems, and causes psychological problems as well as physical impairments such as: bladder, cardiovascular, pulmonary, endocrine, muscoskeletal, and skin problems. Spinal cord injured patients develop osteoporosis, diabetes and depression more often. New injuries in one year reportedly total 30-32 million.

In a city the size of Denver, health professionals estimate that about 60-70 new injuries will occur in a year. Out of these injuries, men are four times as likely as women to be injured. Right now 200-400,000 people are living with spinal cord injuries. The most common cause of these injuries are from motor vehicle accidents, violence and sports. Spinal cord injuries are a young population with a average age of 19 yrs old.

When the spine is broken, surgery is often performed to help support the orthopedic stability rather than to correct the paralysis. Long term prognosis is limited; most people show some improvement within the first 6-9 months and then plateau at 2 years.

What's new in spinal cord injuries? They are looking for better ways to help gain recovery of function, cure, chronic pain management, spasticity management and functional electrical stimulation. They are trying a new experiment of implementing nerve cells into the spine to see if they hold and regain nerve control. Also, now a pump is being implanted into the abdomen with a catheter into the spine to help stop spasticity.

Computers are great resources for spinal cord injured patients. This way they can reach out to the world and communicate with others. Computers have different devices that can be used for the handicapped--namely the voice activated system.

More information about spinal cord injured patients is available at www.pva.org. The site has 31 pages that are dedicated to this subject.