Acute care of spinal cord injury: A challenge to the emergency medicine clinician

Given proper emergency management and extended rehabilitation, not only can most patients be successfully returned to a socially acceptable existence, but on occasion functional use of the limbs can be regained. In addition, modern technology is fast becoming more capable of giving hope to those individuals whom the emergency department and specialized trauma center teams can help through the acute spinal cord insult. An extensive research program is underway in this country and throughout the world directed not only toward the development of artificial limbs but toward the creation of artificial nervous systems. Such a creation may one day allow individuals who have lost limbs once again to 'be aware of their arms and legs' and to use them as they were meant to be used. It is the responsibility of first-line emergency medicine practitioners to give spinal cord trauma patients the chance to benefit from this new technology.