Posts from ‘Treatments’
Spinal cord injury patients around the world may draw new hope for the future from the story of a paralyzed little dog who was able to walk again after receiving an experimental spinal cord treatment. Cambridge University scientists pioneered the new treatment that made it possible for Henry the dachshund to walk after he was paralyzed by a severe spinal cord injury.
Veterinarians at the Cambridge Veterinary School took cells from the dog’s nose and injected them into his ailing spinal cord. The New York Daily News reported that nose cells were used because they encourage the growth of new nerve fibers in the spinal cord. Henry had lost the ability to walk at the end of last year when discs between the vertebrae in his spine ruptured. It was also reported that certain species of canines have an increased risk of spinal cord injuries, so they make good candidates for exploration of experimental treatments.
Scientists had previously reported success with the nose cell technique in experiments with rats, which inspire professors Nick Jeffrey and Robin Franklin to attempt the experimental procedure on the dachshund. The scientists hope to eventually use the procedure to treat human patients with severe spinal cord injuries.
In addition to the medical treatment, Henry received physiotherapy and rehabilitation on a treadmill. Only a month after getting the nose cell treatment, Henry was able to walk again. The poor little puppy was reportedly downtrodden and depressed before he received the procedure. Afterward, his owner reported signs of the dog’s returning happiness.
Sarah Beech, the owner of the lucky dachshund, was amazed by the miraculous results of the veterinary treatment. She was quoted in the New York Daily News article saying, “It’s incredible,” Henry’s owner, Sarah Beech, told the Daily Mail. “I didn’t think Henry would ever be able to walk again, but over the last few months, he has been wagging his tail and taking small steps.”
The news of such rapid success in reversing Henry’s paralysis should bring hopeful expectation to the many spinal cord injury patients waiting for such amazing treatments to be made available to humans. With all the recent advances in spinal cord injury treatments, it seems only a matter of time before paralysis is seen as a temporary, instead of irreversible, condition.
(pic from flickr.com/photos/franklin_hunting)
Upwards of 250,000 people suffer from severe spinal cord injuries, and many of those patients have lost the ability to use their arms, legs, or even most of their bodies. There are very few treatment options available for paralysis and spinal cord injury victims, but a recent article in Health Scout from the Ivanhoe Broadcast News reported on a controversial camp that is providing new hope for many patients. The camp in question is in Sanford, Florida, and patients at the camp are encouraged to get out of their wheelchairs and “stand on their own,” the article reported.
One patient, 20-year-old quadriplegic Amanda Perla, was mentioned in the article as being able to stand by herself with the help of a metal bar. Two years ago, Amanda was paralyzed in a tragic car accident on her prom night. She was told by doctors she would never walk again and would be bound to a powered wheelchair for the rest of her life, but six months later, with the help of the Step Up Recovery Center, she has transitioned to a manually powered wheelchair.
The owner and founder of the Step Up Recovery Center, Amanda Perla’s mother Liza Reidel, opened up the center as her response to the hopelessness and lack of available treatment options presented to her daughter by doctors. At the center, spinal cord injury recovery specialists prompt patients to get up out of their wheelchairs and perform “aggressive exercise and repetitive motions” in an attempt to “reorganize the nervous system,” the article read.
While some doctors have criticized the recovery center for providing false hope to its patients, the goals of the center are to “help patients regain function,” and to “possibly even walk again.” Although Amanda Perla is still bound to a wheelchair, she noted that she has already recovered beyond the expectations of her doctors, and she believes that with further treatment and rehabilitation she will walk again some day.
Clients at the recovery center undergo three-hour therapy sessions three or four times a week. While critics worry about giving patients false hope, the center advocates progressive action in the face of an otherwise dreary prognosis. It is a progressive advance to offer movement therapy and physical rehabilitation attempts to patients who would otherwise have resigned themselves to life in wheelchairs with no hope.
Although patients at the center have yet to walk again after paralysis, the increased movement and deliberate exercise is something the patients would not otherwise be exposed to, and in that sense, it provides a positive option where one did not previously exist.
(pic from flickr.com/photos/meanestindian)
The Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Health Care (AAAHC) recently recognized and accredited Laser Spine Institute (LSI) Tampa as a facility that provides the “highest quality of care for patients and a safe work environment for medical staff and employees,” said a recent PRNewswire release. LSI are industry leaders in providing elite care, and resort-like rehabilitation amenities to patients who can benefit from minimally invasive spinal surgeries.
With surgical facilities in Tampa, Florida and Scottsdale, Arizona, as well as consultation facilities in San Diego, California and The Villages, Florida, LSI performs endoscopic outpatient procedures to correct painful spinal issues stemming from bulging and herniated discs, pinched nerves, spinal stenosis, degenerative disc disease, foraminal stenosis, bone spurs, spinal arthritis, and failed open back or neck surgeries.
The AAAHC conducted their usual two-day rigorous on-site survey and both the Tampa and Scottsdale facilities and required LSI to undergo a self-assessment of all of their procedures, policies, and processes. The AAAHC found that LSI met or exceeded all the qualifications necessary for them to receive the highly coveted accreditation.
The LSI facility in Scottsdale has four cutting edge operating rooms, and the Tampa flagship facility has seven. Both locations also provide patient access to MRI, radiology, physical therapy, and examination rooms with state of the art technology and equipment.
All of the surgeries performed at LSI facilities require an incision less than one inch long. Patients undergo examination, surgery, and recovery all at the same location. The PRNewswire release said, “From pre-operative imaging and diagnostic testing, to endoscopic laser surgery and post-operative physical therapy, patients receive the highest quality care combined with the most advanced treatments.”
Cheryl Harper, a former patient of LSI and mother of two young boys had only glowing praise for the treatment she received at the LSI facility. She was quoted in the article as saying, “The pain took over my life from morning to night. I have two little boys and I was always tired. After surgery, I feel like I’ve added 10 to 20 years onto my life. Now I’m active and spending time with my family, especially my two little boys.”
Potential patients of LSI who suffer from back or neck pain can get more information by visiting LSI’s website at http://www.laserspineinstitute.com or by calling 1-877-205-7498.
(pic from flickr.com/photos/andreanna)
Medical tourism⎯a term created by travel agencies and mass media outlets to describe the process of traveling across international borders to receive health care⎯offers spinal cord injury (SCI) and traumatic brain injury (TBI) patients a global buffet of treatment options, usually at a fraction of the cost of similar treatments in the United States.
Over 50 nations, including Cuba, South Africa, Canada, Panama, China, Korea, Brazil, Mexico, and India, recognize medical tourism as a national industry. In 2007 over 750,000 Americans traveled outside of the U.S. seeking medical procedures in other nations, while the number of American medical tourists will likely number in the millions in 2009.
The reasons behind traveling internationally to receive care are many; however, most medical tourists seek foreign care due to vastly higher costs of care in their home country, restrictive insurance coverage and lack of coverage for certain procedures, and excessively long wait times for local care. These motivators, in addition to improvements in technology, increasing standards of care in many countries, and increasingly cheap and easy travel, make medical tourism appealing to millions of patients each year.
Humans have engaged in medical tourism since the times of ancient Greece, when Greek travelers sought spas and health care in their travels around the Mediterranean. Modern patients seeking international medical care usually engage in the following process. First, a patient seeks a medical tourism provider and provides them with their medical history. Then, a team of health care professionals reviews the case and gives a recommendation for a location, procedure, and a medical visa. Finally, the patient travels to their destination, receives their treatment, and either stays in the country or returns home for recovery.
While medical tourism offers many benefits, including massively cheaper prices for care, a wider range of treatment options, and much faster service, critics raise important concerns about the potential problems involved in medical tourism. Some of the downsides to medical and health tourism include: heightened exposure to exotic and foreign diseases, lower quality of care, travel-related stress for recovering patients, difficulty in filing international malpractice suits, unethical organ harvesting practices, first world preferential treatment and loss of care for local citizens, loss in revenue for first world medical care providers, uncertain and/or lacking regulatory and legal oversight, and widely varying standards of patient safety and care.
A litany of international accreditation and regulatory bodies have cropped up to provide consumers with a sense of safety and security while traveling abroad for medical purposes. The Joint Commission International (JCI), Trent International Accreditation Scheme, the Society for International Health Care Accreditation (SOFIHA), Health Care Tourism International, the International Medical Travel Association, and the Alliance for Patient Safety provide regulatory services for both patients and health care professionals worldwide, to insure patients receive safe, high quality, state-of-the-art patient care when traveling internationally.
These organizations provide assistance to foreign hospitals in raising their levels of care to receive accreditation, as well as assisting patients in connecting with the best possible facilities at the lowest prices available worldwide.
Wooridul Spine Hospital in Seoul, Korea has recently presented itself as one of the most advanced and high quality hospitals in the world. The hospital offers innovative treatments for a range of conditions including advanced spinal surgeries, treatments for metastatic spinal cancers, and other advanced treatment and technology for spinal injuries.
Since many advanced forms of treatment and rehabilitation strategies for TBI and SCI are not covered by domestic insurance plans, medical tourism offers a vast expansion of treatment options for SCI and TBI patients. Medical tourism offers a way around the formerly insurmountable obstacles presented by extremely high treatment costs and restrictive insurance coverage. While medical tourism is not without risk, millions of patients worldwide receive high quality medical care they may not have otherwise been able to afford.
Medical tourism has also had an effect on the development on insurance policy and modernization of medical care around the globe. Many U.S. insurance companies offer international health care options, and hospitals and clinics in prime medical tourist destinations have drastically improved their technology, staff, and facilities to meet the high standards of care first world patients have come to expect.
Links specific to SCI and TBI patients:
A highly qualified Indian Neurosurgeon:
http://www.healthbase.com/resources/doctors/neurosurgery/dr-s.s.praharaj.html
Neurosurgery in Panama: http://www.hospitalpuntapacifica.com/specialties/neurosurgery.php?specialties=open&cat=self
Neurological Treatments in Thailand:
http://www.meditourinternational.com/medicalpartners/thailand_bhmc.php
Neurosurgery in Israel:
http://www.shemere.co.il/treatment.php?actions=show&id=194&instance_id=6
Neurosurgery in Kerala
http://www.keralatraveltourism.com/medical-tourism-in-kerala/neurosurgery-in-kerala.html
Scientists with DaVinci Biosciences and Hospital Luis Vernaza have developed a way to effectively treat spinal cord injuries (SCI). Researchers found that injecting a patient’s bone marrow-derived stem cells (BMCs) into the spinal column benefited both acute and chronic SCIs. When a spinal cord is injured, there is hemorrhaging which leads to swelling and restricted blood flow. The injected BMCs promote blood vessel growth, which aids in healing.
In February’s issue of Arthritis Care & Research, a study funded by the National Institutes of Health addressed the occurrence, or lack of, exercise prescriptions. Of the 700 participants in the sample, less than 50 percent had been encouraged or told to use exercise as part of their recovery plan.
As many of you already know from personal experience, chronic pain is a very real and highly prevalent result of spinal cord injuries. Finding ways to deal with it when a cure is lacking can be both frustrating and time consuming. According to Kazuko L. Shem, M.D. with Santa Clara Valley Medical Center’s Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation Center, 65-95 percent of spinal cord injury patients experience pain with up to 45 percent classifying it as “sever disabling pain”.
When it comes to spinal cord rehabilitation, each and every professional a brain or spinal cord injury survivor works with has an important—yet specialized—job to perform. Generally speaking, the survivor will work with three teams. These are the medical team, the therapist team, and the support team…
Recovering from a brain or spinal cord injury is a complex process with many steps. And one of the most important steps is finding the right rehabilitation center. The quality and type of care the survivor receives will have a significant impact on the rare of recovery, the ability of the survivor to reintegrate into society and work, and the long-term outcome. By following three steps, the patient and his or her loved ones can ensure the right rehabilitation facility is found…
This week’s resource of note is Palliative care.
Palliative care is designed to compliment the treatment you are receiving for illness and injuries such as traumatic brain injuries (TBI) or spinal cord injuries (SCI). The goal is to relieve the patient of pain, stress, fatigue, loss of appetite, constipation, nausea and difficulty sleeping with will result in a better overall quality of life for the person in treatment…
