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Article: Vascular Events After Spinal Cord Injury: Contribution to Secondary Pathogenesis.
- Article from:
- Physical Therapy
- Article date:
- July 1, 2000
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2000 American Physical Therapy Association, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Spinal cord injury results in the initial physical disruption of structures in the spinal cord (primary insult) and in the generation of secondary events that collectively injure intact, neighboring tissue. The concept of secondary injury was originally described in 1911 by Allen,[1,2] who reported an improvement of neurological function in the injured spinal cord after myelotomy and removal of the contused tissue. These results suggested that noxious agents in the contused tissue were damaging adjacent, intact spinal cord segments and led to the development of the concept of primary and secondary injuries. Primary injury typically refers to the initial mechanical damage, ...