spinal cord injury

[rahulsharma]

A spinal cord injured patient has several problems and complications related to his injury. So, how to cope up with them easily and how a nurse can provide better care in preventing complications of spinal cord injury.

[nurseprnRN, BSN, RN]

The complications can be managed medically as well a proper education would be require for the patient to prevent himself from the complications.

As we all know spinal cord injury has 5 level in which AIS-A, AIS-B, AIS-C, AIS-D, AIS-E. Its means AIS-A is complete injury whereas all other are incomplete injury. The complete injury patients has only 2-3 percent chance to recover whereas other has 50 percent chance. So, complete injury require more attention.

OK, now I get it, so we're looking at somebody in a foreign nursing school here. OP, in the US we expect students to read and study a topic, then made decisions about what to do for the patient based on their reading, and to be able to explain their reasons for their choices. Copying and pasting from another text isn't the same thing. So what have you learned about spinal cord injury in your reading? What do you think is the most important thing for nursing care in the immediate post-injury period, during hospitalization, and during the time when the patient goes home to live with his injury? Why do you think so? What would you teach a patient about his self-care? Why?

It is not true that someone with a higher severity of injury needs more attention. Every spinal cord injury requires a lot of attention at the beginning (why?).

ASIA stands for the American Spine Injury Association. Their scale from A-E describes severity of injury, not level, with -A meaning complete (no sensory or motor function preserved in the sacral segments) and -E being normal function. Level of injury refers to the place in the spine where the injury is, cervical, thoracic, lumbar, or sacral.

[rahulsharma]

YA ASIA means american spine injury association which gives the severity of injury. In cervical injuries it depends on the level of injury for example if the injury is from C1-C3 the patient can be dependent to ventilatory support for life whereas C4-C5 are also same but there is some motor power can be preserved. In C6-C8 level the patient is able to do his breathing independently and some motor power can be preserved.

For all the patient bladder can be managed by CIC 4-6 hourly an bowel training is provided to maintain the bowel and bladder functions. But in cervical injury patient we can't achieve full independence as they are quadriplegic patient.

[nurseprnRN, BSN, RN]

Good. So what would be your priorities of care for each of these, and why? In your own words.