View clinical trials related to Spinal Cord Diseases.
Filter by:The purpose of this study is to determine what effect intraoperative topical steroids have on reducing swallowing difficulty following Anterior Cervical Discectomy and Fusion surgery.
PANGEA is an international prospective point prevalence study to describe the epidemiology, interventions, and outcomes in children with acute critical brain disease.
Cervical myelopathy is commonly associated with degenerative spinal disease. Dysfunction of the autonomic nervous system is also evident in many cases of cervical myelopathy. Autonomic dysfunction may result in haemodynamic instability and hypotension under anaesthesia. It is important to maintain adequate mean arterial pressure in order to perfuse the spinal cord and prevent cord ischemia. Heart rate variability, the physiological variations of the differences between heart beats, has been used to diagnose autonomic dysfunction. In patients with cervical myelopathy it may enable the anaesthetist to predict hypotension thereby allowing for early treatment and prevention of spinal cord ischemia.
This study will evaluate the efficacy of a newly developed serious game, SCI HARD, to enhance self-management skills, self-reported health behaviors, and quality of life among adolescents and young adults with spinal cord injury and disease (SCI/D). SCI HARD was designed by the project PI, Dr. Meade, in collaboration with the UM3D (University of Michigan three dimensional) Lab between 2010 and 2013 with funding from a NIDRR (National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research) Field Initiated Development Grant to assist persons with SCI develop and apply the necessary skills to keep their bodies healthy while managing the many aspects of SCI care. The study makes a unique contribution to rehabilitation by emphasizing the concepts of personal responsibility and control over one's health and life as a whole. By selecting an innovative approach for program implementation, we also attempt to address the high cost of care delivery and lack of health care access to underserved populations with SCI/D living across the United States (US). H1: SCI Hard participants will show greater improvements in problem solving skills, healthy attitudes about disability, and SCI Self-efficacy than will control group members; these improvements will be sustained over time within and between groups. H2: SCI Hard participants will endorse more positive health behaviors than control group members; these improvements will be sustained over time within and between groups. H3: SCI Hard participants will have higher levels of QOL than control group members; these differences will be sustained over time within and between groups. H4: Among SCI Hard participants, dosage of game play will be related to degree of change in self-management skills, health behaviors and QOL.
The limaprost alfadex can improve the surgical outcomes in patients with cervical myelopathy.
There is a relationship between CSM and hypertension, probably a cause/effect relationship, and investigators term this type of hypertension "cervicogenic hypertension". Abnormally functioning serotonergic pacemaker cells in the dorsal raphe nucleus inappropriately activate and inhibit parts of the central and autonomic nervous systems as part of a chronic stress response, which causes hypertension and migraine. This theory is now being expanded to encompass both CSM and essential hypertension, the idea being that these two conditions are intimately related.
The goal of the investigators work is to establish how nerve transfers can be best used to improve upper extremity function in patients with cervical level spinal cord injury (SCI). The investigators' hypothesis is that nerve transfers are safe and effective and will improve function and quality of life in patients with loss of upper function due to spinal cord injury. The investigators plan on looking at upper limb function, and health-related quality of life in patients before and after surgery to better understand how patients benefit from these treatments. A nerve transfer procedure can be used to rewire the system to make some muscles work again following SCI. The nerve transfer procedure (which is done in the arm and not at the level of the spinal cord) can be used to bypass the damaged area and to deliver a signal from the brain to a muscle that became disconnected following that injury. A donor nerve is taken from another muscle whose use is not essential and then transferred to help in providing more a more critical function. For example, one type of nerve transfer is done to restore the lost ability to pinch or grasp small objects between the fingers that occurs in many patients with cervical SCI. In this surgery, a donor nerve that normally helps flex the elbow. This nerve can be used because the biceps muscle is also working to flex the elbow. This donor nerve is cut and re-attached to the nerve going to muscles in the forearm that provide pinch by bending the tips of the thumb and index finger. Because the nerve transfer procedure involves cutting and reattaching nerve and muscle tissues, time is required to regenerate working connections between the nerves and muscle as well as to allow the brain to relearn how to use and strengthen that muscle.
More than half of the middle-aged population has radiologic evidence of cervical spondylosis (Irvine 1965) and a subset of this population develops cervical spondylotic myelopathy (CSM), a condition in which the spinal cord is impaired, either by direct mechanical compression or indirectly by arterial deprivation and/or venous stasis. In this study we aim to test the hypothesis that diffusion tensor imaging can provide prognostic information on the integrity of the spine in these patients which is unavailable from conventional MRI images
The purpose of this trial is to determine the efficacy of spinal cord stimulation, using wire leads, to produce an effective cough in patients with spinal cord injuries.
This study will demonstrate that vaporized marijuana results in antinociception when compared to placebo in subjects with spinal cord injury. To further evaluate potential benefits and side effects, the effect of different strengths of cannabis on mood, cognition, and psychomotor performance will also be measured.