Dr. Young, or anyone else that can help.

[MidnightToker]

I suffered a fall almost 5 years ago, I landed on my feet and shattered my L1.i had to get 4 rods and 2 plates connecting to my T12 and L2. I Also damaged my cauda equina.

I can walk but its very slowly and with a cane, i walk flat footed so my knees take all the impact. I lost all feeling on the back side of my body. I cant feel my butt, back of my legs, ankles, feet and toes and i lost bowl and bladder. i have to use a in and out catheter and bowl stimulation.

My question is, what is out there for me? i dont know really anything about stem cell or other things that are hopefull to everyone with a spinal cord injury. I know there are some great things going on in the research of spinal cord injurys and wonder what i should look into.

If you need more information about my injury to get a better of an idea on what i should do. just ask, i will answer any questions you guy/gals have.

Thanks

[6 Shooter]

http://sci.rutgers.edu/forum/showthread.php?t=104011 This has helped us a whole lot and is an alternative. Currently stem cells for SCI are not available in the US.

[Leo]

if it sound to good to be true it probably isn't

study a lot because not much there just yet

we need advocates

Originally Posted by MidnightToker

I suffered a fall almost 5 years ago, I landed on my feet and shattered my L1.i had to get 4 rods and 2 plates connecting to my T12 and L2. I Also damaged my cauda equina.

I can walk but its very slowly and with a cane, i walk flat footed so my knees take all the impact. I lost all feeling on the back side of my body. I cant feel my butt, back of my legs, ankles, feet and toes and i lost bowl and bladder. i have to use a in and out catheter and bowl stimulation.

My question is, what is out there for me? i dont know really anything about stem cell or other things that are hopefull to everyone with a spinal cord injury. I know there are some great things going on in the research of spinal cord injurys and wonder what i should look into.

If you need more information about my injury to get a better of an idea on what i should do. just ask, i will answer any questions you guy/gals have.

Thanks

[Wise Young]

Originally Posted by MidnightToker

I suffered a fall almost 5 years ago, I landed on my feet and shattered my L1.i had to get 4 rods and 2 plates connecting to my T12 and L2. I Also damaged my cauda equina.

I can walk but its very slowly and with a cane, i walk flat footed so my knees take all the impact. I lost all feeling on the back side of my body. I cant feel my butt, back of my legs, ankles, feet and toes and i lost bowl and bladder. i have to use a in and out catheter and bowl stimulation.

My question is, what is out there for me? i dont know really anything about stem cell or other things that are hopefull to everyone with a spinal cord injury. I know there are some great things going on in the research of spinal cord injurys and wonder what i should look into.

If you need more information about my injury to get a better of an idea on what i should do. just ask, i will answer any questions you guy/gals have.

Thanks

Midnight Toker,

Based on your description, you likely have a conus injury, as well as cauda equina. The latter would cause a loss of sensation in your anal and perineal area, your bladder and bowel control, and possibly your feet. When you refer to flat-foot, I am assuming that you are wearing an ankle-foot orthosis that is keeping your footdrop from affecting your walking.

Let us divide the problems and the solutions.

The tip of the conus contains your sacral spinal cord segments. So, the conus injury is very likely to be the cause of your loss of sacral sensation, bowel/bladder function. At the present, we don't have any therapy that can rebuild the sacral segments. On the other hand, there is a technique that can utilize nerves from the upper lumbar segments to re-innervate the bladder and bowel. This was first reported by Xiao in China several years ago and has been taught to several American groups including NYU, Thomas Jefferson in Philadelphia, and Wayne State in Detroit. If you do a search for Xiao, you can find out more information about that. It is not a cure and it requires the sacrifice of the function of a segment but it may restore some bowel and bladder.

The cauda equina problem is difficult. While the cauda equina is part of the peripheral nerve and we know that regeneration can occur in periperal nerves, very little recovery occurs in the cauda equina for two reasons. First, the injury is between the dorsal root ganglion cells and the spinal cord. In other to get sensation back, the axons have to grow back into the spinal cord and then make synapses on neurons in the spinal cord or regenerate all to the way to the brainstem where it can make synapses with the nucleus gracilis for proprioception (position senses). Second, if the injury is close to the spinal cord, motoneurons may die. This is particularly true when the injury is close to the spinal cord or may involve the spinal cord such as a conus injury. Therefore, there may be loss of motoneurons.

There is a glimmer of hope on the horizon for cauda equina injuries. One group (Doug Kerr, et al., at Johns Hopkins) have successfully transplanted embryonic stem cells that produced motoneurons and showed that these motoneurons will regrow axons out of the ventral roots to muscle, using combination therapies. With the advent of IPS (induced pluripotent stem) cells being developed very rapidly, I think that we are not too far from the time when immune-compatible motoneurons precursors can be transplanted into the spinal cord and various regenerative factors can be used to grow the axons out of the spinal cord to reinnervate muscle.

Wise.