Spinal Injuries: A Comprehensive Guide

Around 1,000 people sustain a spinal cord injury in the UK each year. Spinal cord injury affects people of all ages and backgrounds; it can happen to anyone at any time.

What does the spinal cord do?

The main function of the spinal cord is to communicate two-way messages between the brain and the rest of the body. When it becomes damaged, those messages are interrupted which can then lead to a loss of movement and sensation. The extent of the loss of function is dependent on what part of the spinal cord has sustained damage. Injuries that are higher up the spinal cord, closer to the head, cause greater disability than those which are lower down.

What is a spinal injury?

Like brain injuries, injuries to the spinal cord can be devastating for the victim and can cause very significant disability.

Spinal injuries can broadly be divided into two categories:

1. Those arising from traumatic causes (for example, a road traffic accident or sports injury) and;
2. Non-traumatic causes, such as medical conditions that affect the spinal cord.

What are the types of injury and medical claims related to spinal cord injuries?

Claims which follow from traumatic spinal cord injuries, such as road accidents, tend to be more common in the context of personal injury whereas those arising from non-traumatic causes are more common in medical negligence cases.

However, we do see cases where there has been medical mismanagement in the immediate aftermath of a traumatic spinal injury that has led to serious disability, particularly following injuries on the rugby pitch.

More typically, medical negligence cases which result in spinal cord injury often arise as a consequence of delays in diagnosis and management or errors in treatment such as spinal surgery.

Any delay in diagnosing or treating spinal problems can lead to unnecessary pain and suffering and affect your prognosis.

For example, cauda equina syndrome is a fairly rare disorder, which usually results from compression of the nerves at the end of the spinal cord often from a herniated disc in the lumbar spine. Pressure on those nerves may cause low back pain, sciatica, numbness in the saddle area, bladder and bowel dysfunction and weakness in one or both legs. It is a neurosurgical emergency and any delay in treatment can leave the affected nerves permanently damaged.

Spinal epidural abscess is a type of infection around the spinal cord. It is another emergency condition that, sadly, is often diagnosed and treated after a period of delay, leaving patients with devastating permanent injuries.

Spinal injuries due to errors during surgery

Sometimes errors can happen in the course of spinal surgery. Spinal surgery might be required for a number of reasons, for example to stabilise fractures, to treat space-occupying lesions (such as spinal cysts and tumours), to decompress the spinal cord or nerves compressed by a prolapsed intervertebral disc (PID or “slipped disc”), treat a spinal abscess or scoliosis (an abnormal curvature of the spine).

As with any surgery, there is a risk of complications, but any medical mistake during spinal surgery can leave you in more pain or with greater disability and the need for additional surgery. For example, accidental damage to the spinal nerve lining (dura) can lead to cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) leaking, which, if not repaired at the time, can cause problems and require further surgery to fix.

What severe can a spinal injury be?

The most serious mistakes can injure the spinal cord, a devastating event that can have lifelong effects on an individual and those close to them. The nature and extent of these injuries depends on the location of the damage in the spinal cord and its severity. An incomplete lesion will leave some function below the level of the injury in the spine, whereas there will be no useful function below the level of the injury with a with a complete lesion.

Patients can be left with relatively minor damage through to total or partial loss of movement and sensation in the legs and trunk (paraplegia) or the legs, trunk and arms (tetraplegia). Damage high up in the cervical spine can result in a patient being unable to breathe properly on their own and needing ventilation support.

The impact of such spinal injuries will vary according to the individual. Early intensive rehabilitation may improve the longer-term outcome following a spinal cord injury and so, where possible, we will endeavour to secure interim compensation payments, which can be used to facilitate this as well as for purchasing any necessary specialist equipment, care, and improving the suitability of your accommodation.

If you or someone you know has suffered a spinal cord injury, please feel free to get in touch with us. You can mail us your query at mail@anthonygold.co.uk or give us a call on 020 7940 4060 and ask for a member of the Clinical Negligence team.