Gregory D. Schroeder, MD, of the department of orthopedic surgery at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, along with physicians from the University of British Columbia in Canada and Center for Sports Medicine and Orthopaedics in Chattanooga, Tenn., investigated the use of high-dose steroids for acute spinal cord injuries and published their findings in Spine.
Here are five things to know about the study:
1. The aim of the study was to collect spine surgeons' current perspectives on the administration of methylprednisolone for acute spinal cord injury and determine how this has changed during the last seven years.
The researchers sent a survey to surgeon members of the Cervical Spine Research Society requesting information regarding their use of steroids for acute spinal cord injury. They received responses from 84 spine surgeons.
2. There has been a significant decrease in the number of surgeons using high-dose steroids in the treatment of acute spinal cord injuries when compared with a previous survey of North American Spine Society members in 2006. In the earlier report, 89 percent of physicians reported using steroids, whereas the according to the current survey, 56 percent reported steroid usage for acute spinal cord injuries.
3. For complete cervical spinal cord injury, 47.4 percent of respondents reported using steroids, and for incomplete cervical spinal cord injury, 56.4 percent of respondents reported the same.
For complete thoracolumbar spine injuries, the steroid usage rate was 46.2 percent and for incomplete thoracolumbar spine injuries, the rate was 55.1 percent.
4. Around 70 percent of respondents reported observing complications from the use of steroids, and 76.3 percent thought that the complications were severe enough to limit steroid use.
Also, of the surgeons who used steroids for spinal cord injury, 26 percent reported that steroids improved neurological recovery, 19.2 percent used steroids to adhere to institutional protocol and 25.6 percent said that they did not think steroids were beneficial but used them because of medico-legal concerns.
5. While there has been a significant decrease in the number of surgeons using high-dose steroids for acute spinal cord injuries, there has been no change in the percentage of surgeons who believe in the efficacy of the treatment, concluded the researchers.
There are about 12,000 new cases of spinal cord injury per year, and the number of people living in the United States with spinal cord injury was estimated at 273,000 in 2013, according to the University of Alabama at Birmingham's National Spinal Cord Injury Statistical Center.
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