Repetition of Primary and Secondary Spinal Cord Injuries (Nursing)

00:01 Hi. Welcome to our video series on neurological disorders.

00:04 In this one, we're gonna take a look at spinal cord injuries, the initial evaluation and the acute-care you'll deliver.

00:11 Okay. So spinal cord injury, there's primary versus secondary injuries.

00:17 Primary injury is the damage to the spinal cord from the initial problem, the compression of the cord, the interruption of the blood supply, the stretching of the cord, whatever happened to damage the cord that's the primary injury.

00:31 Then there's the secondary injury and this is when things can get really complicated.

00:36 We see that spinal cord has incurred some initial damage.

00:39 But now there's progressive changes in damages after the initial injury.

00:44 So think about things like, it could be bleeding for hemorrhage.

00:47 You could have a clot. You could have a breakdown of blood brain barrier.

00:51 Remember, that's the one that's meant to protect things from getting into the central nervous system.

00:55 Edema and swelling can also cause further problems.

00:58 You can have cells die in cellular necrosis.

01:01 You might lose that autoregulation.

01:03 Have problems with the sympathetic nervous system.

01:05 You could have sensory loss and motor loss.

01:08 Overall, it's not a very happy story, is it? I mean you'd think the first point is bad enough when you have the primary injury, but know that caring for a patient after a spinal cord injury can become very complicated.

01:22 So, let's look at the spinal cord injury again, it's also known as the primary injury.

01:27 It's caused by the "event," the trauma or the damage to the spinal cord.

01:33 Now, it may cause temporary or permanent damage to spinal cord function.

01:37 It could take several weeks after the injury or the event for things to kinda settle down and us to know what the end result is going to be.

01:46 Now again, the most common cause of spinal cord injuries are motor vehicle accidents, falls, violence; if someone was attacked; or sadly even sports injuries.

01:56 So you will see all kinds of patients, all walks of life in all ages with a spinal cord injury.