What is Spinal Cord Injury (SCI)?
Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) is a traumatic condition. The effect of SCI depends on the type of injury. There are two types of injuries: complete and incomplete. Complete injury is a severe injury where there is no voluntary function or sensation bilaterally below the level of the injury. An incomplete injury has some bodily function below the level of the injury with varying degrees of mobility and sensation. Some patients might have no movement but some sensation or vice versa (Boninger et al., 2012; Fehlings, 2013).
The level of injury is very helpful in predicting which part of the body will be affected. The motilities vary depending on the types of injury and the higher the injury toward cervical nerves, the higher will be the dependency on the medical and social support and prolonged rehabilitation (QSCIS, 2010).
The American Spinal Injury Association (ASIA) Standards (ASIA, 2013) have been widely used to assess motor function of SCI. Spinal cord injuries are divided into largely four sections: cervical (C1 to C7), thoracic (T1 to T12), lumbar (L1 to L5) and sacral nerve (Sarhan, 2012) as can be seen Figure 1.
Figure 1. Picture of spinal cord. Source: (Bickenbach, 2013).
Table 1 describes conditions and injury sites of cervical and thoracic, as they are the more serious conditions, to give some reflection of the complexity of the condition and how it could relate to the amount of information generated as a patient experiences the effects of SCI (Fehlings, 2013; Kim, Ludwig, Vaccaro. R.A., & Chang, 2008; Lin, 2003; Merritt, Rowland, & Pedley, 2010).
Table 1. Summary of clinical description of spinal cord injuries
| Injury Site | Condition |
| C-1, C-2, C-3, C-4 | Often on ventilation for breathing as well as pace makers |
| C-5 | Shoulder and bicep but no wrist movement |
| C-6 | Wrist but no hand movement |
| C-7 & T-1 | Straighten arms but little dexterity with hands and fingers |
| T1 to T-8 | Control of hands but poor trunk control |
| T-9 to T-12 | Good trunk control and good abdominal muscle control |
| S-1 to S-5 | Bowel, bladder and sexual function |
Australian Institute of Health Welfare survey over period 2007-2008 showed 50-59% accounted for cervical injuries (n=127), the most common one being C4-C5. The next common neurological level was T12/L1 (n=26) of 11%, lumbar and sacral made up for remaining cases (Norton, 2010).