Outcome of Stem Cell Transplantation in Patient with Spinal Cord Injury: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Spinal cord injury (SCI) is well known as a severely disabling injury that can result in long-term neurological impairment and a great impact on the social and economic aspects of the patients. To investigate the controversy regarding Stem Cell Transplantation as a treatment modality to alleviate the devastating effect of Spinal Cord Injury, we performed literature research according to PRISMA guidelines through Pubmed, Cochrane, and EMBASE Library to find studies about SCI and its stem cell management October 20th, 2020 with the keywords "stem cell transplantation" OR "spinal mesenchymal stem cell" OR "treatment" AND "spinal cord injury" OR "traumatic spinal cord injury") OR "outcome“. The search was filtered to include clinical human studies in the last 5 years' publication period and written in English only. A total of 15 non-duplicate citations were found. 14 articles remained after a title and abstract screening. Ten studies are excluded from this study because they do not contain any outcomes of interest. Four articles are selected for this systematic review. A total of 72 patients were included in this review from 4 prospective cohort studies. Most studies classified their neurological status based on ASIA (American Spinal Injury Association) classification for quantifying the SCI severity. In conclusion, Stem Cell transplantation yielded satisfactory results in comparison to conventional management of SCI patients. Future studies with longer terms should be performed to cement the validity of this finding.