Overview of Paraplegia


Overview of Paraplegia
Paraplegia refers to syndrome caused by transverse lesions of spinal cord with the loss of movement function of the lower part of the body as main clinical manifestations. (spinal cord is one part of central nerve and is divided into cervical segment, thoracic segment, lumbar segment,  lumbarsacral segment and tail segment from top to bottom ).





In medicine, paraplegia caused by transverse lesions of spinal cord above the second thoracic vertebra is called as high level paraplegia while the paraplegia caused by transverse lesions of spinal cord below the third thoracic vertebra is called as paraplegia of lower part.

Paraplegia refers to a disease in which after the thoracolumbar spinal cord is damaged, the sense, movement, reflex and others of the extremities below the wounded level loss and the the functions of bladder and anal hincter lost. Cervical spinal trauma always leads to quadriplegia. Among which, if the above mentioned functions completely lost, this condition is called as complete paraplegia. If there still exist partial functions, the condition is incomplete paraplegia. In early period, the symptom is flaccid paralysis but it will develop into spastic paralysis gradually about 3-4 weeks later. The causes of paraplegia are related to trauma of spinal cord.
 
Paraplegia is mainly divided into traumatic paraplegia and non-traumatic paraplegia

    1. Traumatic paraplegia refers to the paralysis of extremities below the spinal cord injury parts caused by external force, which is mostly caused by direct or indirect violence. The injury parts easily appear in the frequent activation segment of spinal column or the physiological radian conversion parts and its degree is proportional to the violence.

Direct external force: Blade, bullet and shell fragments cause injuries to spinal cord.

Indirect external force: Traffic accidents, falling from height, diving accidents and others. Indirectly external force is the main causes for spinal cord injury and paraplegia.

2. Non-traumatic paraplegia is mainly caused by tumor, infection and others, and some are caused by congenital oculoauruculovertebral dysplasia.
① Vertebral hemangiomas causes paraplegia, which is common in elder women and often occurs in single or multiple vertebral body of thoracolumbar segment.

② Giant cell tumor of vertebral causes paraplegia, which is common in the young and middle-aged.

③ Metastases of cervical cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer, lung cancer, thyroid cancer and other cancers lead to paraplegia under which the disease course of patients with paraplegia is slow and the symptoms will appear gradually.

④ If paraplegia is caused by tuberculosis, lesions often appear in thoracic vertebrae or  cervical vertebra. The disease course of patients with this type is slow and is mainly characterized by spastic paralysis. Patients have symptoms of weakness and stiffness of extremities or lower extremities.

⑤ Spinal degenerative disease and metabolism disease also can result in paraplegia of patients.

⑥ Scoliosis, spinal bifida, spondylolisthesis and other causes lead to paraplegia. The reason for scoliosis resulting in paraplegia is that scoliosis is easily to lead to spinal cord injuries.

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