Spinal Cord Injury: Modern Clinical Management and Its Correlation to Advances in Basic Science

This chapter reflects the yearning for discoveries within the field of spinal cord injury (SCI) and points out the difficulties, opportunities, as well as possibilities to relate and translate the results from basic science to clinical management. After a brief presentation of “spinal cord history,” we provide a short overview of the cornerstones of modern management of patients with SCI. This overview will, besides introducing basic scientists in the field of clinical practice, also expose the inherent imprecision of everyday clinical care compared to the high methodological requirements of experimental SCI research. We will focus our presentation on medical management aimed at preventing the consequences of secondary injury in the acute period, i.e., neuroprotection. A brief overview of various techniques of neural regeneration in the subacute (late) and chronic phase will follow this. Finally, based on the progress in basic science within the fields of neuroprotection and regeneration, some thoughts about future clinical therapeutic avenues will be discussed.