What a website – www.christopherreeve.org! The Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation is one of the best resources out there for learning more about spinal cord injuries (SCI), spinal cord research and how to get involved in finding a cure.

Take, for example, the research story about a young paraplegic (translation: paralyzed from the chest up or down with the use of only two of his limbs) who can now stand and step with assistance and move his legs. For the team of scientists and researchers from the University of Louisville, UCLA and the California Institute of Technology who helped make this breakthrough possible, a new era of spinal cord injury (SCI) treatment is on the horizon. Rob Summers, a 25-year-old former baseball player who was severely injured in a 2006 car accident, is the test subject who is benefiting from the success of their research.

Through his comprehensive Locomotor Training, rehabilitation specialists retrained his spinal cord neural networks to produce muscle movements once again. With the use of electrical impulses not previously used with this type of rehabilitation, researchers were able to combine numerous forms of treatment to reach this goal, and will continue to do so to treat even more types of injuries.

Intrigued by this discovery, my further searches on the web reveal that this is a tremendous breakthrough in the field of spinal cord injury (SCI) research. Nearly 10% to 15% of spinal cord injury (SCI) patients can now receive this treatment to help them regain some control of their legs, which would inevitably alter their mobility and activity dramatically. Evidently, hope is in the futures of many living with a spinal cord injury (SCI).

Listen to Reggie Edgerton,a leading researcher involved in the breakthrough technology.

Learn more about the science of Locomotor Training.

 

By: Tanza Loudenback

Experea Healthcare Blog Editor