Care and research that improves life after spinal cord injury: Live from Nashville

In September 2019, the Academy of Spinal Cord Injury Professionals (ASCIP) convenes in Nashville, Tennessee for its large interprofessional Educational Conference and Expo. This issue’s content represents the influential contributions of ASCIP’s diverse membership, representing the broad scope of work underway to improve the lives of people with spinal cord injury and dysfunction.

Also in this issue is the latest clinical practice guideline from the Consortium of Spinal Cord Medicine, “Identification and Management of Cardiovascular Risk after Spinal Cord Injury”,¹ published originally by the Paralyzed Veterans of America. ASCIP was among the professional organizations that contributed to this important guideline for clinicians involved in providing long-term care for individuals with spinal cord injury/dysfunction. JSCM is pleased to help disseminate this guideline to the global community of spinal cord injury professionals.

In 2011 and 2012, JSCM published special issues on the initial findings of the SCIRehab Project,^2,3 a federally funded project that examined for the first time, the components of spinal cord injury rehabilitation. The project’s goal was to unlock “the black box of SCI rehab” through in-depth research of the type of care rendered by each type of professional: psychologists, therapist, nurses and physicians. The SCIRehab articles consistently place among JSCM’s top cited content. In this issue is a follow-up study by Taylor et al.⁴ on complementary therapies used by rehabilitation professionals, and their potential future applications.

In 1996, the American Board of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation added spinal cord medicine to its subspecialty certification offerings,⁵ a major step toward ensuring optimal care for individuals living with spinal cord injury/dysfunction. Certification data have been limited, however. In this issue, Sabharwal et al. provides an analysis of the performance of the 566 candidates who took the Spinal Cord Medicine Certification examination from 2005 to 2014, including input from examinees on its relevance to their practice.⁶

Among ASCIP’s named awards and lectureships is the Ernest Bors, MD Award for Scientific Development, awarded to the best article by a young investigator published in the Journal of Spinal Cord Medicine during the prior calendar year. This year’s Bors Award winner is Kristin Garlanger, DO, of the Mayo Clinic, first author of “Functional outcomes in patients with co-occurring traumatic brain injury and spinal cord injury from an inpatient rehabilitation facility’s perspective”, published in 2018.⁷ This study of 256 individuals with spinal cord injury showed that 41 percent had co-occurring brain injury, a finding with important implications for rehabilitative care and outcomes. We are pleased to report a record number of applications for this prestigious award honoring the legacy of Dr. Bors (1900–1990), who we memorialize for his bedside research, care, and advocacy for veterans disabled by spinal cord injury.⁸

Because this year also saw a record number of conference abstracts, the ASCIP presentation and poster abstracts are published online only on JSCM’s site on Taylor and Francis Publishing. As a reminder, access to all of JSCM’s content is a member benefit of ASCIP. Courtesy of our publisher, the abstracts, as well as the Clinical Practice Guideline in this issue, are free access, fostering the sharing of this important information.