View clinical trials related to Spinal Cord Injuries.
Filter by:The study will be investigating the effectiveness of oxycodone-naloxone (brand name Targin®) at treating chronic pain in individuals with spinal cord injury. The goal of the study is to compare the effectiveness of Targin® at treating chronic pain in individuals with sub-acute and chronic spinal cord injury compared to opioid medication that is not compounded with naloxone.
This study will evaluate the Phoenix device for safety and effectiveness at allowing persons with SCI who are non-ambulatory or poorly ambulatory to stand up and walk under a variety of conditions.
The purpose of this study is to determine if TAR-302-5018, an investigational drug-delivery system, is safe and tolerable in patients with neurogenic detrusor overactivity (NDO) resulting from spinal cord injury (SCI).
To evaluate the relationship between secretion of melatonin and sleep quality in spinal cord injury patients versus a database of healthy volunteers.
What are the implications of wheelchair propulsion-induced fatigue for the development of shoulder pain and how can this knowledge improve prevention programs? With this project, the "Shoulder Health and Mobility group" of the Swiss Paraplegic Research in Nottwil (Switzerland) wants to investigate how fatigue during wheelchair propulsion affects risk factors for shoulder pain of persons with a spinal cord injury (SCI). The investigators want to find out how the handrim wheelchair propulsion technique changes with fatigue and want to define persons who are susceptible to fatigue. Getting life back after a SCI will most likely occur with the help of a wheelchair, whether it is at the beginning of rehabilitation or throughout further life. Gaining back mobility and participation in social life is important, also because of the multiple positive effects of physical activity on person's health and self-esteem, preventing several chronic diseases. Therefore, it is needed to try to stay away from shoulder injuries. Since the shoulder is very mobile and thus unstable, the joint is at increased risk for injuries. This is reflected in the high amount of persons with a SCI having shoulder pain (between 30 to 70 %). Once pain or an injury occurred, it is hard to recover, as so far no effective treatment is available. Several factors as gender, weight, age, level and completeness of the SCI, movement patterns and muscle strength were found to be related with injury and pain. However, it is currently not well understood what exactly causes shoulder injuries. Handrim wheelchair propulsion is an inefficient mode of propulsion and asks a lot of demands to the upper body. Because of the inefficient movement and the shoulder being prone to injuries, wheelchair propulsion has a high chance of inducing shoulder injuries and pain. Propelling with a technique minimizing the loads on the shoulders and improving the capacity to perform these movements (as increasing muscle strength) is of utmost importance as these factors can be modified by training. Previous intervention programs have learned wheelchair users to propel with long and smooth strokes aiming to reduce the loads. Although someone might be aware of the recommended techniques and can apply them, propulsion technique might change with fatigue and could become less optimal. A similar phenomena happens for example in landing strategies from a jump. In a fresh state, persons will try to have a stable landing reducing the impact on the lower limbs. With fatigue, however, there will be a tendency to forget about the proper landing technique which on its turn can increase the risk of injuries. This was suggested to be one of the reasons why there is an increased prevalence of injuries towards the end of a game. So far, it is unclear how fatigue alters propulsion technique and how these changes are related with an increased risk of shoulder pain. Tis project aims to achieve the goals by investigating how very strenuous wheelchair propulsion (fatigue intervention) of 15 minutes alters the propulsion technique of 50 persons with a SCI. All participants will perform the fatigue protocol in the movement analysis lab at the Swiss Paraplegic Research. During the protocol, participants will be requested to perform as many 8 loops as possible with their wheelchairs, including starts, stops, and right and left turns. Before and after the protocol, movement patterns, muscle usage and loads during wheelchair propulsion and the characteristics of the shoulder muscle tendons during rest will be assessed. Furthermore, the person's characteristics, such as weight, age, gender, time since injury, injury level, health conditions, use of medication, muscle strength and activity levels will be assessed. All these factors might be associated with the susceptibility to fatigue. To answer our questions, we will first compare the propulsion technique (movement patterns, loads, and muscle usage) before and after the protocol to investigate the direct effect of fatigue. Secondly, we will investigate the association of negative changes in tendon appearance (which has been related to injury) with the changes in the propulsion technique to investigate the implications of acute changes that might increase the risk of injury. Finally we will run a model including all variables to determine which person's characteristics are associated with an increased susceptibility to fatigue. The results will be highly relevant as it will give answers about the content, the aims and the target population of prevention programs for shoulder injury, aiming to improve mobility, participation, and quality of life in persons with SCI.
Spinal cord injury (SCI) is debilitating to an individual's health, functional capacity and quality of life. This contributes to a sedentary lifestyle and an elevated risk for cardiometabolic and hypokinetic diseases. While physical activity is promoted in persons with SCI to reduce incidence of secondary disabling conditions, a majority of individuals are inactive and have low levels of fitness. High intensity interval training (HIIT) is a form of exercise characterized by brief, intermittent bouts of intense exercise, separated by periods of lower intensity exercise for recovery. The level of improvements in aerobic exercise capacity following HIIT are similar to moderate-intensity continuous training, but only require a fraction of the total energy and time commitment. Little research has been done on HIIT in persons with SCI, who are unable to carry out conventional lower limb HIIT exercises. An upper extremity form of HIIT that is effective, safe, and quick could be an attractive option for these individuals. The study will look at feasibility and acceptability of a 6-week HIIT program for persons with a spinal cord injury who are untrained. Investigators will test 10 untrained individuals with SCI/D who use a manual wheelchair full time. Prior to any testing, participants will be screened and will need to obtain a signed medical release from their physician. The screening involves asking the participant the inclusion/exclusion criteria and administering two short questionnaires related to physical activity. After obtaining the release form, participants will be scheduled for their first visit. During Visit 1, baseline testing and questionnaires will be completed. The study questionnaires will address sociodemographics, pain and health measures, general health, and physical activity. Exercise testing includes an aerobic exercise stress test (conducted following American College of Sports Medicine guidelines using an electronic ergometer) and an anaerobic (maximum power output) test. After Visit 1, participants will exercise three times per week for six weeks, following a standard HIIT protocol. Two of those sessions will be supervised by a trainer, and one session will be completed on their own. After six weeks, participants will be scheduled for Visit 2 and will complete the same evaluations as Visit 1. Additionally, participants will complete evaluations on their level of satisfaction of the training program and their likelihood to continue.
There are over 44,000 persons living with spinal cord injury (SCI) in Canada, who face substantial challenges in maintaining a healthy body composition after injury. As a result, obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease are prevalent in this population. Guidelines indicating that twice weekly 20-minute sessions of exercise (plus resistance training) will increase physical fitness in those with SCI have been recently published. However, no SCI-specific guidelines indicating the volume of exercise to reduce the risk of developing obesity-related diseases exist. Longitudinal studies indicate that a weekly exercise-related energy expenditure of 2000 - 2500 Calories is correlated with the least likelihood of cardiovascular disease in the able-bodied population. There is little information regarding energy expenditure (EE) for activities carried out by persons with SCI, with less available for persons with tetraplegia. Once known, this EE data can be used to develop exercise interventions to determine the volume of voluntary exercise required to reduce obesity and risk factors for diabetes and cardiovascular disease in those living with tetraplegia.
This study will examine the safety and feasibility of using an exoskeleton in subjects who are less than 6 months post spinal cord injury (SCI).
The primary goal of the proposed study is to identify the contributions of the amount of task-specific practice on locomotor (i.e., walking) recovery in patients with chronic (> 1 yr) motor incomplete spinal cord injury (iSCI). Consistent with principles of motor learning and exercise physiology, the investigators contend that certain training (i.e., dosage) parameters of physical rehabilitation are critical to mobility outcomes following neurological injury. Specifically, the specificity, amount and intensity of physical interventions (i.e., practice) may influence specific outcomes in the patient population treated. In ambulatory patients with iSCI, there are very few studies that have controlled for or targeted these training variables or their influence on locomotor recovery. Previous work suggests these training parameters may influence locomotor recovery in patients with other neurological disorders (i.e., stroke), although few studies have attempted to delineate similar contributions of in iSCI. Indeed, no studies have carefully controlled the amount of task-specific practice during physical rehabilitation of patients with iSCI, and such interventions are rarely utilized in the clinical setting. The goal of the present study is to delineate the relative contributions of amount of task-specific training on locomotor outcomes in individuals with iSCI. Using a cross-over, randomized clinical trial design, the investigators anticipated non-specific (i.e., non-stepping) training activities would result in smaller improvements as compared to task-specific (stepping) training. The investigators will investigate the effects of such training on walking performance and kinematics, as well as the impairments thought to contribute to walking performance. Successful completion of this project could have an immediate impact on rehabilitation research and treatment of people following iSCI, and may be utilized to treat more subacute patients with iSCI or other acute-onset neurological disorders.
Skeletal muscle is the largest endocrine organ in the body, playing an indispensable role in glucose homeostasis. Spinal cord injury (SCI) prevents skeletal muscle from carrying out this important function. Dysregulation of glucose metabolism precipitates high rates of metabolic syndrome, diabetes, and other secondary health conditions (SHCs) of SCI. These SHCs exert a negative influence on health-related quality of life (HRQOL). New discoveries support that a low level of activity throughout the day offers a more effective metabolic stimulus than brief, episodic exercise bouts. The proposed study will translate this emerging concept to the population of individuals with SCI by using low-force, long-duration electrical muscle stimulation to subsidize daily activity levels. Recently, we demonstrated that this type of stimulation up-regulates key genes that foster an oxidative, insulin-sensitive phenotype in paralyzed muscle. We will now test whether this type of activity can improve glucose homeostasis and metabolic function in patients with chronic paralysis. We hypothesize that improvements in metabolic function will be accompanied by a reduction in SHCs and a concomitant improvement in self-reported HRQOL. The long-term goal of this research is to develop a rehabilitation strategy to protect the musculoskeletal health, metabolic function, and health-related quality of life of people living with complete SCI.