Cervical Spinal Cord Injury – Outpatient Procedures

Transcript

Most of the procedures involved in reconstructing function after spinal cord injury are simple outpatient procedures. They typically take less than four hours and the patient usually can go home the same day. Patients will often be given a small course of narcotic medications, but most of the pain can be managed with simple over the counter Tylenol and ibuprofen. The function achieved with reconstructive procedures to restore arm and hand function after spinal cord injury is not normal function. The patient cannot play piano with these hands, or probably do pull ups, pulling their entire body up. But what we do achieve is a basic pinching grasp. Patient can feed themselves. They can catheterize themselves, they can operate their iPhone, and they do most of the basic tasks of daily life. But it’s important to understand that cervical spinal cord injury is a severely debilitating injury and to recover pinch and grasp is a dramatic quality of life improvement.