Physician disclosure of uncertainty about prognosis and recovery can be incredibly frustrating when you sustain a catastrophic spinal cord injury (SCI). Not knowing your odds of regaining loss function can be scary.
Until recently, standards of recovery prediction didn’t give physicians a very accurate estimate of what recovery might look like for that individual. But now, a neuroimaging study by Stanford Medicine scientists and collaborators has found a measurable predictor, in the width of spared spinal cord tissue at the injury site.
Can an MRI determine spinal cord injury recovery?
The breaking, international study found that a simple measurement taken from standard MRI images can predict a patient’s recovery more accurately than previous methods of testing muscle movement and touch sensation.
Analyzing 227 patients with cervical SCI, researchers measured the width of tissue bridges from MRI scans taken three to four weeks after injury — when the spinal cord has stabilized and any initial swelling has subsided.
Comparing this tissue measurement with the patients’ sensorimotor test scores at hospital admittance and at discharge three months later, revealed the pattern: more preserved tissue, more preserved function.
Researchers went on to develop a statistical model that predicts how many points a patient is likely to gain on specific sensorimotor tests. The model revealed that the number of millimeters of tissue spared predicts function the patient is likely to gain during a follow-up period of three months or 12 months.
Researchers from Craig Hospital, the University of Colorado School of Medicine, BG Trauma Center Murnau, Balgrist University Hospital, University of College London and the Ohio State University contributed to the study.
What does an early, accurate prognosis mean for people with spinal cord injury?
Insight of this nature will help physicians and therapists in choosing appropriate treatments and recommending appropriate rehabilitation. Knowledge of your prognosis can help you plan for the future and finances, and provide a quick start in researching the specifics of the level and severity of your injury.
This knowledge will also afford researchers the opportunity to group individuals with similar recovery potential for testing experimental therapies for SCI, increasing the efficiency of clinical trials, requiring fewer patients to reach statistical validity.
The benefits of tissue bridge measurements are already accessible in most hospitals that treat SCI.
Phone: