Clinical Trials Outside the United States: Spinal Cord Injury

Spinal cord injury (SCI) is a devastating condition that causes significant morbidity and mortality. Spinal cord injury can occur anywhere between the neck and the lower back. SCI mostly affects young adults, and motor vehicle accidents alone account for more than 50 percent of the SCI cases. Other causes include sporting accidents, serious falls either at work or at home, wounds, and diseases of the spine such as spina bifida.

The estimated annual global incidence of spinal cord injury is 15 to 40 cases per million. In North America, approximately more than a million individuals live with a disability as a result of spinal cord injury and half of those are quadriplegic, with the paralysis impacting all four limbs to some extent. For those individuals, the ...