Daily Archives: October 26, 2015

Researchers at San Diego State University and two other schools won a $15 million grant to continue their work on a brain chip that could help people with traumatic spinal cord injuries undo the effects of paralysis, it was announced Monday.

Autonomic dysreflexia often goes unrecognised in patients with spinal cord injury. Health professionals must be able to recognise when patients are at risk. A young patient with tetraplegia arrives in the emergency department with a severe headache, dilated pupils, beads of sweat on their forehead, chest pain, bradycardia and a blood pressure of 280/130. What do you think is happening? Recreational drug use? A hypertensive crisis with a renal, endocrine or neurological cause? Is your immediate response to carry out an electrocardiogram and blood tests? In fact, this life-threatening emergency could be caused by something as simple as a full bladder.