This article offers a detailed guide to adaptive equipment procurement after a spinal cord injury or disability. It emphasises the significance of initial assessment, research, and involving healthcare professionals, family, and caregivers. It also covers vendor reliability, financial aspects, equipment trial, customisation, training, maintenance, reassessment, community support, and embracing new technologies. Overall, the holistic approach aims to ensure a positive outcome for individuals needing adaptive equipment.

A spinal cord injury can be a life-changing event that no one is ever prepared for. Medical science has learned a great deal about how to treat the short-term consequences of a spinal cord injury. In the longer term, the imperative is to recover whatever function can be recovered through focusing on rehabilitation. Assistive technology can help to compensate for function that cannot be recovered. By preventing complications and striving for health, individuals can expect to enjoy good quality and length of life.

The mindset, attitudes and beliefs of the injured person and those around them will have a great impact on their potential for recovery, but there are limits to how far ‘belief’ will take them. Just believing that something is possible is not enough to make it so. We live in an age when technology, therapy and medical science can help individuals recover more function or at least remain healthier than would have seemed impossible just a few years ago. Whilst there is no cure yet for spinal cord injury, this no longer seems an impossible dream.

Every spinal cord-injured person faces a different challenge as they essentially have injuries with somewhat different characteristics. To deal with this, medical science has sought to find a way to classify spinal cord injuries in a way that helps to guide treatment, and to some extent, define the expectations for recovery. This article examines how spinal cord injuries are classified.

In the first article in this series, we described how the lifespan of our general population increased on average as we moved through the first half of the 20th century. This was largely due to improved public health measures and the arrival of antibiotics. At present, we no longer see lifespan increasing and what is worse, many of us spend the last years of life in poor health and subject to chronic conditions that are associated with ageing. These conditions are:-

Heart disease

Cancer

Neurodegenerative disease

Type 2 diabetes and related metabolic dysfunction

These conditions are highly correlated with age and approximately 80% of the population will succumb to them. To some extent, they may have common causes that we would need to dig deep to uncover. In particular, metabolic dysfunction seems to be a precursor to all these other diseases.

If you or someone close to you is living with transverse myelitis, then you know how life-altering this neurological condition can be. It often results in sudden symptoms, such as muscle weakness, pain and bladder dysfunction. It has several possible causes. Some people recover from the symptoms and resulting complications of transverse myelitis, while others don’t.

With its sudden onset and potential for long-term impact, it's important that we have the best understanding of what causes transverse myelitis and what steps, if any, can be taken to minimise the chance of another episode occurring.

In this blog post, we'll take a closer look at the underlying causes, transverse myelitis symptoms, as well as potential ways to reduce it's severity and increase quality of life through some of the technology we offer.

In this article, we explore the second most important training principle from strength and conditioning which considers the “Dose” of training - in other words the Volume, Intensity and Frequency of training. We look at how these factors relate to neurorehabilitation and learning.