Finally, figure three shows that the nucleus pulposus does not fill up the space where the spinal cord is at. In figure two, one could assume that what is happening is a thoracic intervertebral disc herniation and that the nucleus pulposus is filling up the spinal canal, a rare event that could result in paralysis. Figure 3 is a better visual representation of what is really happening to the…
Network Chiropractic Care: Evidence-Based Wellness At the Solomon Center in Phoenix, AZ, our chiropractic team utilizes a comprehensive set of complementary techniques and treatments to help our patients achieve maximum wellness. As part of our holistic approach to health maintenance, we encourage our patients to consider Network Chiropractic Care (Network Spinal AnalysisTM). Network Spinal AnalysisTM Basics Using precisely targeted contact on the spine signals the brain to send energy waves to the source of something new in the environment.…
Injuries can range to brain and spinal cord injuries, many players have broken their legs or hands when playing football and some can never recover again. A lot of force on a player's body when they get hit can cause a player's brain to get injured or damage. The impact of player's head can cause them to have a concussion for example a strong impact of 14…
5 Spinal Bifida 1. Definition: • A birth defect that affects the neural tube. • The neural tube is the embryonic structure that ends up developing into the brain, spinal cord, and the tissue that surrounds and encloses them. In babies diagnosed with spinal bifida, the neural tube does not form correctly and is left open, causing defects.…
Working Toward a Solution By Shane Barry Many doctors and medical researchers have spent years on their exploration into spinal cord injuries. The encounters in which they have made have been used toward finding a new and innovative solution to these injuries in the hope of helping these patients walk or even move or feel again. Most of the injuries included are quite tragic such as partial or complete paralysis. Varying spinal cord injuries can come from the slightest impact or fall. They can occur from a failed attempt at a backflip on a trampoline, or even falling when you were jumping up and down on top of the bed.…
A spinal cord injury within C1-C8 is called Quadriplegia or Tetraplegia. Paralysis affects the cervical spinal nerves, in different degrees in all four limbs. The body will still try to send messages from the injury to the brain through the spinal cord, via sensory pathways. The brain will also attempt to send messages from the brain to muscles via motor pathways. However these signals will be blocked by the damage in the spinal cord where the injury is located.…
Spinal Cord injury is the second leading cause of paralysis in the United States. Persons affected by spinal cord injury lose their independence and have a severely deteriorated quality of life due to the functional impairments in their upper and lower limbs. Various studies have revealed that specific interventions and therapies after a spinal cord injury can lead to the recovery of movement, even after severe paralysis. When the spinal cord, a thin bundle of nervous tissue, is damaged, signals from the brain that usually travel down the nerves spinal cord to the muscles are interrupted. The nerve fibers in these descending pathways are broken or destroyed and they undergo reorganization to regenerate essential pathways such as those involved…
DEFINITION of Spinal Arteriovenous Malformations is the rare abnormal tangle of blood vessels in the spinal cord. Untreated spine AVM can permanently damage your spinal cord. Oxygen-rich blood enters the spinal cord through the arteries which branch on to the small blood vessels. The spinal cord uses oxygen from the blood in the capillaries. The oxygen depleted blood and then passes into the veins that drain blood from the spinal cord to the heart and lungs.…
Sitting, walking, standing and running are actions we take for granted. However, 1 in 6000 people are unable to perform these daily functions (Reference, Genetics). Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is a genetic disorder affecting the motor neurons located in the spinal cord and brainstem responsible for muscular movement (Reference, Genetics). Genes accountable for the production of survival motor neurons (SMN) proteins, the SMN1 and SMN2, suffer mutations or deletions in their genes (Reference, Genetics). This causes atrophy and weakness in muscles used for motor functions (Reference, Genetics).…
Since there is very little room for growth in the skull the growth of a glioblastoma can cause intracranial pressure which is what leads to many of the symptoms associated. General symptoms of the disease include headaches, dizziness, nausea and vomiting. The focal signs are weakness on one side of the body, sensory loss, with the most prevalent symptom being memory loss or neurological deficit due to the involvement of the frontal and temporal lobe (Bruce, 2016). Seizures, stroke like symptoms, and visual loss can often be signs of a glioblastoma as well (Young, 2015). Depending on where the location of the tumor is and how big the tumor is, the displaying symptoms can be very diverse.…
The management of patients with spinal cord astrocytoma remains controversial, and there are currently no universally accepted treatment guidelines. As described in previous studies, the most significant predictor of survival in patients with SCA is the pathological grade of this disorder [4, 5, 12]. In the present study, similarly, patients who had low-grade SCA had a significantly better prognosis than those with high-grade SCA. Additionally, the role of surgical resection remains unclear, with current studies reporting conflicting data regarding its impact on survival [4, 18-23]. Some investigator recommended aggressive resection of SCA [17, 20, 22, 23], whereas others indicated that biopsy alone yielded a better prognosis [4. 5, 9, 24].…
A motor neuron is a nerve cell forming part of a pathway along which impulses pass from the brain or spinal cord to a muscle or gland. In layman’s terms, a motor neuron is a type of cell in the nervous system that directly or indirectly controls the contraction or relaxation of muscles, which in most cases leads to movement. If a motor neuron is damaged, the signal from the brain cannot be properly transferred to the respective muscles which would cause the contraction of that muscle to perform insufficiently. This would results in muscle weakness and atrophy of the muscle. This is exactly what takes place in SMA, a lower motor neuron disease.…
Spinal Stenosis is a narrowing of the spinal canal or of the spaces between the vertebrae where spinal nerves pass through. The narrowing can typically be caused by arthritis or injury. The vertebrae can form bone spurs. These are bony growths that pinch the spinal cord or the nerves branching from the spinal cord (Spinal Stenosis). The discs can shrink and make the space between the vertebrae smaller.…
These tests helped determine the extent of his paralysis. Finally, the doctors performed a lumbar puncture to analyze my dad’s cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). During the lumbar puncture my dad did not feel any pain because of the numbness of his body. He felt the pressure on his back when the needle entered his body, but he did not experience any pain (S. Jackson, personal communication, 2016).…
Spinal fusion is a serious surgery to think about. There are many things to think about like after having surgery you won’t be able to eat or drink for at least two to three days and you’ll be sleeping all the time. There’s going to be a lot of pain. You’ll be doing your normal activities differently. I was in middle school when I had spinal fusion.…