Not all spinal cord injuries are equal. The location and severity of a spinal cord injury affect your symptoms and your prognosis (potential for recovery). The injury’s location and severity also affect the kind of work you’ll do in rehabilitation.
To categorize spinal cord injuries, doctors assign a level based on a “level of injury” scale. Assigning a level helps medical teams communicate about the injury. It can also help an injured person and their family members know what to expect during recovery and rehabilitation.
Levels of Spinal Cord Injuries
Every SCI is unique. However, every SCI also shares certain factors. Doctors use these shared factors to evaluate an injury and assign a level. The shared factors that help doctors determine your SCI level include where the injury occurred and how complete the damage is.
Location
The spine is made of several bones called “vertebrae.” The location of a spinal cord injury is identified by which vertebrae are injured.
The vertebrae are numbered, starting at the top of the spine. They’re also assigned a letter that marks their location in the spine:
- C: Cervical vertebrae, or the bones in the neck. These are numbered C1 through C8.
- T: Thoracic vertebrae are in the upper and middle back, numbered T1 through T12.
- L: Lumbar vertebrae make up the lower back. They’re numbered L1 through L5.
- S: Sacral vertebrae extend from the pelvis to the tailbone. They’re numbered S1 through S5.
Spinal cord damage above any one vertebra makes the nerves below that point stop working. By numbering the vertebrae, doctors get a sense of what body parts will be affected.
Completeness
The spinal cord passes through the center of the vertebrae. It connects to the body through two spinal nerves at each vertebra. The nerves send signals to move various body parts. They also collect signals about touch and pain and send those back to the brain.
A spinal cord injury is “complete” when one or more nerve connections are severed. With no way to send signals, the brain loses the ability to move body parts below the injury point or to receive information from those body parts.
An “incomplete” injury damages the nerves but doesn’t completely sever them. Different patients experience incomplete injuries in different ways. An injured person might be able to move but not feel pain or touch the same way. Or the feeling might be intact, but movement might be difficult.
What Levels Mean for Your Injury and Recovery
After an SCI, you may hear doctors talk about your injury by referring to its levels. For instance, a doctor may say you or a loved one has “a complete T1 injury” or “an incomplete L2 injury.”
Spinal cord injuries to C1 through C8 or to T1 cause the loss of movement and sensation in all four limbs. This condition is called “quadriplegia” or “tetraplegia.”
Injuries at T2 through T12 damage the connection between the brain and the legs. A condition called “paraplegia,” or loss of sensation to the legs and lower body, results. Some patients also experience loss of bowel and bladder control.
Injuries to L1 through L5 can also affect control of the legs, bowels, and bladder. However, the extent of loss and the work needed in rehabilitation can be different than that for patients with T2 through T12 injuries.
S1 through S5 injuries most commonly result in symptoms that affect the feet. In a few cases, bowel and bladder control may be affected as well.
Whether or not an injury is “complete” also affects your recovery. Many patients with “incomplete” injuries can regain 1-2 levels of function with work in rehabilitation. Coordinating with skilled therapists is essential during this process.
How Your Spinal Cord Injury Level Affects Recovery and Rehabilitation
Incomplete injuries usually offer a better prognosis than complete ones. When the spinal cord or nerves are damaged but intact, healing can occur. An injured person can learn to adapt to symptoms that do not fully resolve.
A complete spinal cord injury causes complete loss of movement and sensation below the injury site. These injuries typically do not heal. Instead, recovery focuses on healing for injured body parts that can repair themselves, like broken bones. Rehabilitation focuses on helping an injured person adapt to the loss of their ability to move or to sense touch and pain below the injury site.
Spinal cord injuries can completely change your life. They can also be expensive and difficult to treat. If you’ve suffered a spinal cord injury, reach out to an experienced Arkansas spinal cord injury attorney today. The team at the Law Office of Jason M. Hatfield, P.A. can help.
