Category Archives: Spinal Cord Injury Treatment

Your ability to control your limbs after spinal cord injury depends on two factors: the place of the injury along your spinal cord and the severity of injury to the spinal cord. The lowest part of your spinal cord that functions normally after injury is referred to as the neurological level of your injury. The severity of the injury is often called "the completeness" and is classified as either of the following: Additionally, paralysis from a spinal cord injury may be referred to as: Your health care team will perform a series of tests to determine the neurological level and completeness of your injury. Spinal cord injuries of any kind may result in one or more of the following signs and symptoms: Emergency signs and symptoms of spinal cord injury after an accident may include: Anyone who experiences significant trauma to his or her head or neck needs immediate medical evaluation for the possibility of a spinal injury. In fact, it's safest to assume that trauma victims have a spinal injury until proven otherwise because: . The rest is here: Spinal cord injury Symptoms - Mayo Clinic … Continue reading →

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--InVivo Therapeutics Holdings Corp. (NVIV)today announced that it has received approval from the Toronto Western Hospitals Research Ethics Board to enroll patients as part of its cervical spinal cord injury study. Toronto Western Hospital is the first study site for the companys cervical spinal cord injury study and Michael Fehlings, M.D., Ph.D., has been named Principal Investigator at the site. Dr. Fehlings is currently Director of the Spinal Program, part of Toronto Western Hospitals Krembil Neuroscience Centre at the University Health Network, Professor in the Department of Surgery, full member of the Institute of Medical Sciences School of Graduate Studies, a Scholar in the McLaughlin Centre of Molecular Medicine, a Scientist in the McEwen Centre for Regenerative Medicine, a Senior Scientist at the Krembil Research Institute, Director of the University of Toronto Neuroscience Program, Co-Director of the University of Toronto Spine Program, and Krembil Chair in Neural Repair and Regeneration. Dr. Fehlings has published over 725 peer-reviewed articles principally in the area of spinal cord injury and complex spinal surgery. He is also currently the Principal Investigator at the site for InVivos INSPIRE study, which is studying the Neuro-Spinal Scaffold in acute, complete (AIS A) thoracic patients. Dr. … Continue reading →

INTRODUCTION Spinal cord injury has become epidemic in modern society. Despite advances made in the understanding of the pathogenesis and improvements in early recognition and treatment, it remains a devastating event, often producing severe and permanent disability. With a peak incidence in young adults, traumatic spinal cord injury remains a costly problem for society; direct medical expenses accrued over the lifetime of one patient range from 500,000 to 2 million US dollars [1]. This topic reviews acute traumatic spinal cord injury. The anatomy and clinical localization of spinal cord disease, other diseases affecting the spinal cord, and the chronic complications of spinal cord injury are discussed separately. (See "Anatomy and localization of spinal cord disorders" and "Disorders affecting the spinal cord" and "Chronic complications of spinal cord injury and disease".) Issues regarding injury to the vertebral column and ligaments are also discussed separately. (See "Spinal column injuries in adults: Definitions, mechanisms, and radiographs" and "Evaluation and acute management of cervical spinal column injuries in adults" and "Evaluation of thoracic and lumbar spinal column injury".) EPIDEMIOLOGY Most demographic and epidemiological data related to traumatic spinal cord injury (TSCI) in the United States have been collected by the Model Spinal Cord Injury … Continue reading →

March 29, 2017 Riyi Shi. Credit: Purdue University A drug developed during World War II as an antidote for a chemical warfare agent has been found to be effective at suppressing a neurotoxin that worsens the pain and severity of spinal cord injuries, suggesting a new tool to treat the injuries. The neurotoxin, called acrolein, is produced within the body after nerve cells are damaged, increasing pain and triggering a cascade of biochemical events thought to worsen the injury's severity. Researchers have now found that the drug, dimercaprol, removes the toxin by attacking certain chemical features of acrolein, neutralizing it for safe removal by the body. The findings, detailed in a paper published online this month in the Journal of Neurochemistry, involved research with cell cultures, laboratory animals and other experiments. "Dimercaprol may be an effective acrolein scavenger and a viable candidate for acrolein detoxification," said Riyi Shi (pronounced Ree Shee), a professor of neuroscience and biomedical engineering in Purdue University's Department of Basic Medical Sciences, College of Veterinary Medicine and Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering. "An extensive body of evidence exists suggesting the toxic nature of acrolein and its pathological role in a variety of disease processes, prompting the … Continue reading →

InVivo Therapeutics enrolled another patient in its INSPIRE study of the Neuro-Spinal Scaffold for spinal cord injury patients. Here are five key notes: 1. The most recent patient is the seventh out of 11 patients who reported an AIS grade improvement at the one-month follow-up after the procedure. The trial's conversion rate is currently 63.6 percent. The patient improved from AIS A to AIS B spinal cord injury between the one- and two-month evaluations. 2. The trial includes two other patients who haven't had their one-month visit yet, but the conversion rate is already higher than published rates for other SCI treatments, which is below 25 percent. 3. In addition to AIS conversion, the patient reported substantial improvement in sensory and motor function; before surgery the patient had T12 neurological level of injury with some spared bilateral sensation at the front of the legs and unilateral palpable hip muscle contraction but couldn't move the legs. However, two months after treatment the patient could move his hips and knees bilaterally and regained some sensory function in almost all regions of the lower back, feet and back of the body below the waist. 4. The Neurovascular Program Director and Principal Investigator at … Continue reading →

Life expectancy for people with spinal cord injury has shown a marked increase due to modern advances in treatment methods and in neuro-urology. However, since life expectancy of people with paralysis increases, the risk of developing of urinary bladder cancer is gaining importance. Single-centre retrospective evaluation of patient data with spinal cord injuries and proven urinary bladder cancer and summary of the literature. Between 1998 and 2014, 24 (3 female, 21 male) out of a total of 6599 patients with spinal cord injury were diagnosed with bladder cancer. The average age at bladder cancer diagnosis was 57.67years, which is well below the average for bladder cancer cases in the general population (male: 73, female: 77). All but one patient had a latency period between the onset of the spinal paralysis and tumour diagnosis of more than 10years. The median latency was 29.83years. The median survival for these patients was 11.5months. Of the 24 patients, 19 (79%) had muscle invasive bladder cancer at T2 at the time of diagnosis. The type of neurogenic bladder (neurogenic detrusor overactivity or acontractility) and the form of bladder drainage do not appear to influence the risk. Long-term indwelling catheter drainage played only a minor role … Continue reading →

Crain's Cleveland Business Zubizarreta House is big step for spinal cord treatments Crain's Cleveland Business From his office on MetroHealth's Old Brooklyn campus, Kilgore, a biomedical engineer and researcher at MetroHealth, has watched construction progress on the Zubizarreta House, a home for patients with spinal cord injuries to stay while receiving ... Read the original post: Zubizarreta House is big step for spinal cord treatments - Crain's Cleveland Business … Continue reading →

Share this story with your network CAMBRIDGE, Mass.(BUSINESS WIRE)InVivo Therapeutics Holdings Corp. (NVIV)today announced that Health Canada has approved the companys Investigational Testing Authorization application to commence a clinical study of the Neuro-Spinal Scaffold in patients with acute, complete (AIS A) cervical (C5-T1) spinal cord injuries (SCIs). InVivo currently is in late stage conversation with several site Research Ethics Boards and expects to announce its first Canadian site in the coming weeks. This approval is an important step towards our goal of redefining the life of the spinal cord injury patient, said Mark Perrin, InVivos CEO and Chairman. We are dedicated to helping as many SCI patients as we can, and this approval helps us to evaluate our investigational product in the most severe spinal cord injury cases, with neurologically complete cervical injuries involving impairment of the arms, hands, trunk, and legs. As I explain further in my CEOs Perspective, moving into the cervical spinal cord is exciting, since each level of the cervical spinal cord has a substantial functional impact. If the Neuro-Spinal Scaffold were able to preserve, remyelinate and/or regenerate just a small area of spinal cord, we believe this could have significant functional consequences. We look forward … Continue reading →

New Rochelle, NY A Phase I clinical trial that targeted individuals with new onset paraplegia to evaluate the safety of transplanting their own potentially neuroprotective Schwann cells into a trauma-induced spinal cord lesion showed no evidence of adverse effects after 1 year. This novel cell therapy approach for treating subacute thoracic spinal cord injury is described in an article in Journal of Neurotrauma, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Journal of Neurotrauma website until April 22, 2017. Kim Anderson, PhD, Allan Levi, MD, PhD, and coauthors from University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and Bruce W. Carter Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center (Miami, FL) describe the design and results of the clinical trial in which they harvested Schwann cells from a nerve of each paralyzed patient, cultured them in the laboratory, and then injected them directly into the site of the spinal cord lesion within 72 days of injury. In the article entitled Safety of Autologous Human Schwann Cell Transplantation in Subacute Thoracic Spinal Cord Injury the authors present the results obtained from three different doses of Schwann cells and report no negative effects related to harvesting or … Continue reading →

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--InVivo Therapeutics Holdings Corp. (NVIV)today announced that Health Canada has approved the companys Investigational Testing Authorization application to commence a clinical study of the Neuro-Spinal Scaffold in patients with acute, complete (AIS A) cervical (C5-T1) spinal cord injuries (SCIs). InVivo currently is in late stage conversation with several site Research Ethics Boards and expects to announce its first Canadian site in the coming weeks. This approval is an important step towards our goal of redefining the life of the spinal cord injury patient, said Mark Perrin, InVivos CEO and Chairman. We are dedicated to helping as many SCI patients as we can, and this approval helps us to evaluate our investigational product in the most severe spinal cord injury cases, with neurologically complete cervical injuries involving impairment of the arms, hands, trunk, and legs. As I explain further in my CEOs Perspective, moving into the cervical spinal cord is exciting, since each level of the cervical spinal cord has a substantial functional impact. If the Neuro-Spinal Scaffold were able to preserve, remyelinate and/or regenerate just a small area of spinal cord, we believe this could have significant functional consequences. We look forward to bringing sites onboard in Canada … Continue reading →