Spinal Cord Injury: A Guide for Patient and Families (American Academy of Neurology)

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Spinal cord injury is often a traumatic and devastating life changing event. This event can leave an individual confused regarding the physical changes and uncertain on how to proceed. The text “Spinal Cord Injury” by Michael E. Selzer and Bruce H. Dobkin was written to assist patients who have just undergone spinal cord injury and to provide clarity to their families and caregivers.

“Spinal Cord Injury” was an easily understood read as the text guides one through a progression of the different stages of spinal cord injury. The text can be broken into 3 different sections to assist in understanding spinal cord injury. The first 3 chapters focus on an overview of the anatomy and physiology of the spinal cord, identifying the different causes of injury and dysfunction followed by the acute treatments associated with spinal cord injury. The following 3 chapters are concerned with health care after spinal cord injury, an explanation of what is happening during rehabilitation and a quick overview of the world of assistive technologies. Finally the last 3 chapters provide an overview of the world of research in the field of spinal cord injury and the current areas of particular interest.

Although the authors chose to use medical terminology throughout the text, they managed to make the content very easily understood. This was accomplished by providing definitions throughout the text as well as including a glossary section at the end of the book. Also, many diagrams were strategically placed throughout the chapters allowing the reader to visually conceptualize the anatomy of the spinal cord. Furthermore, the authors made a point of highlighting key statements throughout the book which were nice tidbits of information in a take home fashion.

Another enjoyable aspect of this book was that the text was excellent at providing the patient with advice and recommendations on issues such as health concerns after spinal cord injury, home/self care, maintaining activities of daily living, walking strategies, utilizing assistive devices and potentially engaging in clinical research studies. An additional highlight is a list of websites to attain further information on spinal cord injury at the end of the text.

One critique of this book is that the statistical information is implied as factual from the authors as they are not referenced throughout the texts. In the context of this book however, this significance is minimal as the target audience is that of the lay person and the realistic relevance is negligible.

Overall this text is recommended as it provides a general overview of spinal cord injury as well as providing some general tips and strategies to assist in the recovery from spinal cord injury and direction to pursue further information.

Conflict of interest 

None.