In most cases, paralysis is caused by acute damage to the spinal cord following a traumatic injury. Nerve fibres are disrupted and nerve cells at, and around, the site of injury are destroyed.
A lesion of the spinal cord not only impacts the ability to move your limbs; the injury also causes a large number of health-related complications and limitations in daily life.
The type of disability which occurs after the spinal cord is injured depends on the severity of injury and the location of the injured segment of the spinal cord. In cases of complete paralysis, all functions below the level of injury will be lost.
After a spinal cord injury, the nerve fibres which send motor signals from the brain to the torso and the limbs are impaired and this causes paralysis of the muscles. Destruction of sensory nerve fibres leads to loss of sensations such as touch, pain and the ability to distinguish between hot and cold.
Less well-known is that spinal cord injury can also severely limit bladder and bowel control, sexual performance and blood pressure.
Learn more about the spinal cord as a part of the central nervous system
and the influence of damage on the body.
The diagnosis of “paraplegia” following a spinal cord injury is likely to become a thing of the past because scientists agree unanimously: injured nerve cells in the spinal cord are capable of regeneration.
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