Principles of Rehabilitation Strategies in Spinal Cord Injury

Abstract

Spinal cord injury (SCI) is a debilitating condition that affects millions of people worldwide and results in a remarkable health economic burden imposed on patients and the healthcare system annually. The most common causes of SCI are the trauma caused by falls, traffic accidents, or violence. The course of SCI is associated with several complications that severely impair the patient’s quality of life, including sensory and motor dysfunction, pain, neurogenic bladder and bowel, autonomic dysreflexia, cardiovascular and pulmonary dysfunction, spasticity, urinary tract infection, and sexual dysfunction. Despite great strides that have been made in the field of regenerative medicine and neural repair, the treatment of SCI still mostly revolves around rehabilitative strategies to improve patients’ quality of life and function. Rehabilitation following the SCI is a multidisciplinary process that requires the involvement of multiple disciplines. Moreover, recent advances in the field of neurorehabilitation following SCI, are changing the face of this field. Therefore, we decided to review various aspects of rehabilitation following the SCI, including the goals and different modalities whereby we could achieve them.