Around 3 million people worldwide are living with a traumatic spinal cord injury. The main causes of this include traffic accidents (50%), falls (21%), and sports accidents (10%). According to the literature, the worldwide incidence is 2.7 to 4.7 per 100,000 inhabitants per year. In Austria there are currently no exact data on the incidence of traumatic spinal cord injuries.
The time factor
With spinal cord injuries, a distinction can be made between primary damage and secondary damage. Primary damage involves the injury or severing of nerve fibers as in, for example, a burst fracture of a vertebra, in which pieces of bone press against the nerves. In contrast, secondary damage is the type of damage that can occur hours or weeks after trauma (edema formation, inflammation reactions, ischemia, etc.) and it can worsen the primary damage. Secondary damage can probably be reduced by a timely decompression, i.e., surgical treatment of the patient.
However, we are currently investigating many other options rather than just surgery for reducing secondary damage, such as medication therapy, stem cell therapy, and many more. As a contribution to paraplegia research, the Austrian General Accident Insurance Institute (AUVA) and the Paracelsus Private Medical University Salzburg have jointly initiated an Austria-wide study for collecting epidemiological data and for finding possible answers to the many open questions.
Projects
- Clinical studies for treatment of spinal cord injuries
