Change of policy
SCI is one of the most difficult challenges in medical science. Sustaining a spine fracture that leads to SCI has a devasting and costly impact on both the indivuals who suffer from SCI as well as their families and communities.
Notwithstanding impressive advances in various fields of medical science in the past half-century, SCI treatments have seen little progress. The demand for rehabilitation techniques for the large number of injured soldiers returning from World War II led to the rehabilitative approach still current – to train people with disabilities towards improved function and self-reliance in a wheelchair. This rehabilitative philosophy has done much good and increased the independence of people with disabilities – but it is not a cure.
A major obstacle to progress in the SCI field is that businesses have seen little profit potential in developing cures of spinal cord injuries – unlike in many other medical fields. This results in insufficient investment in SCI research and experimental treatments for adequate progress to be made. Clearly, new ways of delivering real results are needed.
A new approach
A new surgical approach is planned on patients who suffer from spinal cord injuries. For the first time surgery will take place on acute SCI only hours after the accident because current surgical results on patients with chronic SCI have not appreciably improved over the last decades. The procedure is directed specifically at the spinal cord itself where all pressure is taken from the spinal cord to avoid irreversible damage to its neural tissue (“Treatment of Acute Spinal Cord Injury by Omental Transposition: A New Approach” by Harry S. Goldsmith, MD, FACS, published by the American College of Surgeons 2009 ).
This experimental treatment will be carried out this summer by the US surgeon and professor Harry S Goldsmith, MD, the author of the new approach, and by local surgeons.