48th ISCoS Meeting

The session on the prevention of Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) organized by Wings for Life during the 48th ISCoS Annual Scientific Meeting that took place from the 21st to 24th of October 2009 in Florence (Italy), gained considerable attention in the mostly clinical community of treating SCI physicians.

This extraordinary session was not only stimulating the audience who had a chance to discover what are the challenges inherent to secondary prevention, but it also give a strong impulse to the ISCoS prevention committee and the speakers themselves to further collaborate in new, exciting ways.

The presentation held by Prof. Michael J Devivo (DrPH) gave an overview on the most common circumstances surrounding motor vehicle crashes, gunshot wounds, falls, and sports-related spinal cord injuries. This background data was necessary to fully point up the extent of the problem and its real consequences. This data mining then serves as a substrate when and where tools of secondary prevention could be mostly useful.  

The presentations, given by the Dr. Rupert Kisser (PhD) and Prof. Andrei Krassioukov (MD, PhD) focused on the incidence of SCI specifically in Europe and during sport activities. This was actually the first time that such an extensive overview over the impact of spinal cord injury in European countries was given. Both Dr. Kisser and Prof. Krassioukov will now co-operate with Dr. Peter Wing in the global mapping of spinal cord injury, in order to provide a global and international overview of causes and incidence.

Dr. Florian Roser (MD), had the challenging task to introduce the concept of prevention in the neurosurgical practice. He illustrated the possible procedures to protect these susceptible structures in the light of the expected trauma and most importantly how to limit the damage in case of trauma – and possible triggered consequences such as syringomyelia. This presentation opened the way to a new kind of practice and was acclaimed by numerous people who suffered spinal cord injury and that established a direct contact with him for further advises.

The last presentation, given by Cornel de Jongh (Biomedical Engineer) was centred on the identification of the weakest point of the cervical spine or to a lesser degree the thoracic spine, points which should be primarily protected in case of trauma. An additional aim of this presentation was to report about an already existing, fully developed prevention, marketable device which might serve as example of technical and economic feasibility. Cornel de Jongh made an excellent contact with Prof. Marcus Pandy, as well a Biomedical Engineer, and with Dr. Michael Fitzharris who is working in South Africa and has a major interest in prevention of road traffic accidents. The Leatt Corporation, who developed the neck protection device called Leatt-Brace®), further established a collaboration with the University of British Columbia to find a way to combine their prevention device (a two shell helmet called Pro-Neck-Tor™) to the neck brace.

The session organised by Wings for Life was regarded as “important” as it had direct application to prevention of spinal cord injury.