Spinal Cord Injury: Modeling, Classification, and Exercise Conditioning

Abstract

2046 Traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI) afflicts eight thousand young Americans annually, while some 250,000 survivors of SCI now live in the U.S. These individuals experience lifelong health challenges associated with physical inactivity and (sometimes) autonomic nervous system dysfunction. Mounting evidence now shows that paralysis survivors benefit from voluntary and electrically-stimulated exercise. However, research examining these benefits requires special knowledge of functional and neurological classification, specific exercise needs, and unique responses of paralysis survivors to acute exercise. Further, persons with SCI represent a unique model for studying the effects of both physical inactivity and reconditioning on persons normally sustaining muscle and cardiac atrophy, anesthesia, osteoporosis, dyslipidemia, thromboembolism and hypofibrinolysis, vascular insufficiency, immune deficiency, autonomic dysregulation, and aging. This symposium will address: 1. how humans with SCI represent a unique model for multi-system study by exercise scientists, 2. uniform standards for evaluation and neurological/functional classification of persons with SCI, 3. modes and beneficial effects of voluntary exercise in chronic survivors of SCI, and 4. benefits of reconditioning exercise provided by electrical stimulation of the paralyzed musculoskeleton.