Case Report: Effects of Lower Thoracic Spinal Cord Stimulation on Bowel Management in a Person with Spinal Cord Injury

Abstract

In an on-going clinical trial to restore an effective cough in tetraplegic individuals, spinal cord stimulation (SCS) is applied over the dorsal lower thoracic spinal cord. SCS results in marked contraction of the expiratory muscles which include the abdominal muscles, resulting in the generation of very large intra-abdominal pressures and restoration of an effective cough [3][4][5][6][7][8][9].Over the course of this study, several persons volunteered that they became aware of an improvement in their bowel routines as a beneficial side effect consequent to the use of SCS. For this reason, we altered our clinical protocol to address BM before and after the