Acute Spinal Cord Injury
What is an acute spinal cord injury?
The spinal cord is a bundle of nerves that carries messages between the brain and the rest of the body.
Acute spinal cord injury (SCI) is due to a traumatic injury that either results in a bruise (also called a contusion), a partial tear, or a complete tear (called a transection) in the spinal cord. SCI is a common cause of permanent disability and death in children and adults.
About 11,000 people a year sustain a spinal cord injury. As many as 250,000 to 400,000 people in the US are living with a spinal cord injury, according to the National Spinal Cord Injury Association. More than half of all SCIs occur among young people between the ages of 16 and 30 years. The majority of SCI victims (82 percent) are male.