Comparison of outcomes between people with and without central cord syndrome.

STUDY DESIGN: Retrospective analysis of prospectively collected data. OBJECTIVE: Central cord syndrome (CCS) is reported to have better outcomes than other cervical lesions, especially for ambulation and bladder recovery. However, a formal comparison between patients with CCS and other incomplete cervical spinal cord injuries (iCSCI) is lacking. Aim of the study is to investigate the neurological and functional outcomes in patients with or without CCS. SETTING: European Multicenter Study. METHODS: Data following SCI were derived from the European Multicenter Study about Spinal Cord Injury Database. CCS was diagnosed based on a difference of at least ten points of motor score in favour of the lower extremities. Patients were evaluated at 30 days, 6 months and 1 year from injury. The neurological and functional data were collected at each time point based on the International Standards for Neurological Classification of Spinal Cord injury (ISNSCI) and Spinal Cord Independence Measure (SCIM). Patients were selected with a matching procedure based on lesion severity, neurological level of injury (NLI) and age. Evaluation of the outcomes was performed by means of two-way Anova for repeated measures. RESULTS: The matching produced 110 comparable dyads. At all time points, upper extremity motor scores remained lower than lower extremity motor scores in CCS compared with iCSCI. With regard to daily life independence, both cohorts achieved comparable improvements in self-care sub-scores between T0 and T2 (6.6 ± 6.5 in CCS vs 8.2 ± 6.9 in iCSCI, p = 0.15) but this sub-score was significantly lower in CCS compared with iCSCI (3.6 ± 5.2 in CCS vs 7.3 ± 7.0 in iCSCI at T0, 13.7 ± 6.2 vs 16.5 ± 5.7 at T2), while the other sub-scores were comparable. CONCLUSIONS: In contrast to previous reports, people with CCS have poorer outcomes of self-care ability compared with iCSCI.

Acute Traumatic and Ischemic Spinal Cord Injuries Have a Comparable Course of Recovery.

Background. The relative rarity of ischemic compared with traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI) has limited a comparison of the outcomes of these conditions. Objective. To investigate the neurological and functional recovery of ischemic compared with traumatic acute SCI. Methods. Data were derived from the European Multicenter Study Spinal Cord Injury database. Patients with ischemic (iSCI) or traumatic SCI (tSCI), aged 18 years or older were evaluated at different time points from incidence: at about 1 month, 3 months, and 6 months. The neurological status was assessed at each time point by the International Standards for Neurological Classification of Spinal Cord Injury and the functional status by the Spinal Cord Independence Measure. Walking ability was evaluated by Walking Index for Spinal Cord Injury, 10-Meter Walk Test, and 6-Minute Walk Test. Because of the imbalances of the 2 groups in respect to size and lesion severity, a matching procedure according to age, neurological level, and severity of injury was performed. Outcomes evaluation was performed by means of a 2-way repeated-measures ANOVA. Results. The matching procedure resulted in 191 pairs. Both groups significantly improved from about 15 days after the lesion to 6 months. No differences were found in the course of neurological and functional recovery of iSCI compared with tSCI. Conclusions. This analysis from a representative cohort of participants revealed that from 15 days following the cord damage onward, the outcomes after iSCI and tSCI are comparable. This finding supports the potential enrolment of patients with acute iSCI into clinical trials from that point in time after the event and an evaluation up to 6 months afterward.