Abstract:

Spinal cord concussion is a variant of mild spinal cord injury, clinically designated as transient paraplegia or neurapraxia, and characterized by variable degrees of sensory impairment and motor weakness that typically resolves within 24–72 hours without permanent deficits. Ideally, a model of spinal concussion should use a closed injury to more accurately model the stretching or axial loading seen in clinical cord concussion, as injuries typically occur as a result of hyperextension or hyperflexion of the spinal cord exacerbated by smaller cervical canals or stenosis. The need for reproducible, quantitative injury models, however, makes the direct application of forces on the exposed spinal cord a necessary trade off for most of animal models of SCI. Our model is designed to represent spinal cord concussion, and to highlight the susceptibility and functional consequences of repeated injury. This study, however, is only a first step in preclinical work on the risks associated with spinal concussion, which will provide a mechanistic framework for understanding the etiology of the injury as well as better guide clinical decision-making for RTP following contact sports injuries. We anticipate that future work from our laboratory and others will elucidate the key parameters of spinal vulnerability following spinal concussion with respect to the time, location, and severity of the injury. To maximize the effectiveness of this work the basic research with animal models should be coordinated with clinical observations and studies of both spinal and brain contusion injuries.