Animal studies of neurologic damage and spinal cord injury are prompting serious discussion among researchers about the possibility of restoring function to patients who become paralyzed after an injury.
While no cures for spinal cord injuries are at hand, they are potentially in sight, said Barth Green, MD, who is chair of neurological surgery at the University of Miami School of Medicine and a leader in spinal cord injury research. Although clinicians are generally pessimistic about recovery from such injuries, researchers are reveling in an "extraordinary amount of excitement" resulting from advances in technologies and in "our understanding about the nature of spinal cord and brain injury," he said. "In the past 10 years there has been an increasing realization that we can solve this problem," said Green, speaking here at the annual meeting of the National Spinal Cord Injury Association.
Meanwhile, immediate benefits to patients from recent research on nerve injury include better clinical management that is improving their quality of life.
Exciting areas of research are being investigated and include: