Recent Research on Spinal Cord Injury

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Abstract
The. he plight of civilian patients in the United States who sustain injuries to the spinal cord, resulting in a permanent paralysis, has been a dismal one. To the existing 125,000 individuals chronically paralyzed in this manner, between 5,000 and 10,000 people are added each year. Most of these additional patients are young, being between the ages of 18 and 25, of which 84% are young men. Compounding the personal tragedy of a group that remains largely depressed and nonproductive is the recent estimate by the Armed Forces that caring for each spinalcord injured patient from the time of his injury to his death costs $900,000. Recently, though, interest has been rekindled in basic research concerning the morphologic, physiologic, biochemical, and vascular events occurring in the spinal cord within minutes and hours of an injury that produces either a transient or a permanent paralysis. The initial stimulus for much of