Spinal cord injuries increase in the summer period and are related to jumping headfirst into water, mainly into swimming pools. But they are not only due to water sports. In recent years, spinal cord injuries caused by mountain biking have sometimes surpassed those caused by diving, becoming one of the most important causes of spinal cord injury today.
In fact, Dr. Ferran Pellisé Urquiza, director of the Barcelona Spine Institute at the Quirónsalud Barcelona Hospital, warns that cycling down mountains and slopes, as well as diving headlong into the water, “are risky sports,” since they can expose the body, and especially the spine, to violent impacts.
“You always have to be cautious and not risk it if you do not have experience or the risk is high. In the case of mountain biking, they are people who usually descend at high speed over uneven terrain. A fall in these circumstances is very similar to a dive, because they are violently thrown forward from the bicycle and fall headlong. The injury occurs with the impact of the head against the ground, reproducing the same injury mechanism of a dive,” describes the expert.
Risky practices
Plunges, bicycle descents and traffic accidents, main causes
of spinal cord injuries in summer
In this sense, Dr. Pellisé maintains that the most frequent spinal injuries in the summer tend to occur in young people who practice these outdoor sports (diving and mountain biking); without forgetting, of course, the impact that traffic accidents have at this time. “Summer includes more holiday activity, more free time and more driving at night. The traffic accident, in itself, is an element of risk for spinal cord injury,” he adds.
Doctor Ferran Pellisé Urquiza, director of the Barcelona Spine Institute at the Quirónsalud Barcelona Hospital
In older people, according to the doctor, spinal cord injury can be caused by low-impact trauma to the head, which generates hyperextension of the neck and causes a high number of cervical spinal cord injuries each year: “It is not uncommon for people to Major trips and hits his head. “In people with a lot of spinal osteoarthritis and narrowing of the spinal canal, these low-impact blows can cause spinal cord injury.”
As the Quirónsalud Barcelona specialist points out, a spinal cord injury occurs when the spinal cord is damaged. Specifically, it details that the spinal cord is the anatomical structure that connects the brain with the extremities and trunk.
Prevention consists of avoiding risky situations
There is a spinal cord injury when the spinal cord, which connects the brain to the
trunk and extremities, is damaged
“It conveys, in a descending direction (from the brain to the extremities and trunk) through the motor pathway, the movement orders that are generated in the brain. It also conveys, in an ascending direction (from extremities and trunk to the brain) through the sensory pathway, the perceptions of touch, pain, temperature, and position, which we collect in the extremities and trunk,” adds this expert.
The concept of spinal cord injury is very broad, as he recognizes, and therefore he considers that it should include any type of spinal cord disease. “Generally, a spinal cord injury is understood as a person who, as a result of an accident or trauma, has a fracture of the spinal column that injures the spinal cord. Vertebral fracture produces spinal damage due to impact or compression of the spinal tissue. As a consequence, the spinal cord stops functioning partially or completely, and temporarily or indefinitely.”
With all this, this traumatologist highlights that when a spinal cord injury occurs, it is quite common for the patient himself, if he is conscious, to be able to identify it: he will perceive that after the accident, or the trauma, he is not able to move any of the extremities, or that He has lost sensitivity. “The next step is to notify the emergency medical services so that we can receive immediate attention,” he adds. “Today in Catalonia, if a spinal cord injury is identified, the emergency medical services (EMS) activate the LMA Code (Acute Spinal Cord Injury), which guarantees immediate treatment of the patient and surgery in the first 24 hours from the accident. ”
At the same time, Dr. Pellisé recalls that prevention involves, above all, not assuming very high risk situations, avoiding situations with a risk of impact on the spine, “because that is where one is most likely to be injured.” “There is no need to stay at home doing nothing; But we must try to take low risks to avoid suffering this type of trauma. External protections can help, but the intensity of the impact is the most determining factor,” highlights this specialist in the treatment of spinal injuries.
Thus, when it comes to diving headfirst into the water, this doctor insists that one has to be convinced that there is depth and that one knows how to jump headfirst, while warning that the same thing happens with bicycles, “they are “risk situations”, and the steeper the descent, or the more irregular the terrain, the greater the risk of suffering a fall that fractures the neck and leads to a spinal cord injury.
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