spinal cord injury

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How to be fairly paid for a spinal cord injury in Georgia.

In our law practice over several decades , we have represented numerous SCI survivors. Most had benefited from rehabilitation services at Shepherd Center or Emory Rehabilitation Hospital, both of which are near us in Atlanta. All of these clients were injured in motor vehicle crashes or falls. One client who had been a high-powered government executive before an accident made him  quadriplegic initially  wanted to just turn his face to the wall and die, but after rehab he used funds from his settlement to equip himself to write…

Low back fracture injuries often arise from high-energy events such as car and truck crashes. We have seen hundreds of them in decades of personal injury law practice.

3d render human spine anatomy with pain symptoms – back view – Grayscale Image

A fracture of a vertebra in the low back (lumbar) region causes back pain, often severe, that is aggravated by movement. When low back fracture injuries involve teh spinal cord or nerves, there may also be bowel/bladder dysfunction, numbness, tingling, or weakness in the limbs.

When low back fractrue injuries are caused by…

Syringomyelia and Chiari malformations are relatively rare, closely related, neurological conditions that may be congenital but also may be caused or severely aggravated by trauma in an accident such as head or neck injury an automobile collision. MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) and CT (computer tomography) scans are essential to the diagnosis of both.

Physicians accustomed to dealing with musculoskeletal injuries such as fractures, disc herniations, and whiplash, often completely miss the diagnosis of these extremely painful and debilitating injuries. They may even accuse the patients of exaggeration or malingering.

Chiari malformation is a little-understood condition in which the lowest…

When my children were riding a bus to elementary school every day, like most parents I trusted the school bus driver to deliver them safely to school and back to our neighborhood. Usually that is what happens as school buses are generally considered the safest means of transporting children to and from school.

But occasionally children are seriously injured or killed in the process of being transported by school buses. We have successfully handled some of those cases.

School bus injury cases are not the same as car wreck cases. Lawyers handling those need to know the legal wrinkles unique…

Cruise ships are like floating cities with thousands of passengers on board. Usually a lot more fun than the typical workaday city, but probably no less likely to involve accidents and injuries.

Cruise ship lines cannot guarantee that no one will get hurt aboard, but they do have a responsibility to prevent dangerous conditions on board that can cause serious injury to its passengers. When a cruise ship accident occurs because of poor maintenance, incompetent or  improperly trained employees, inadequate safety equipment or emergency precautions, the cruise  line can be held accountable.

Cruise ship tickets typically have a provision that…

As a country boy raised in a time when three black & white TV channels with an outdoor aerial was the height of technology, I get a kick out of it when I find that someone I don’t know in another part of the country reposts on the Internet one of my video clips.

Recently I was surprised to find that a lawyer  in Missouri reposted my video about spinal cord injuries.

Thanks for the free publicity!

The word on the extended family grapevine tonight is that my wife’s cousin’s daughter, Alex McArthur, a recent Davidson College graduate, has been named Ms. Wheelchair America for the coming year. She has been in a wheelchair three years due to muscular dystrophy.

Last year, one of our clients, Alyson Roth, a spinal cord injury survivor, was Ms. Wheelchair California and a runner up for Ms. Wheelchair America.

Both Alyson and Alex are bright, beautiful and courageous young women.

Spinal cord injury survivors may someday have more hope for functional recovery. An article in Brain by James Fawcett at Cambridge University summarizes research papers reporting functional recovery following a variety of treatments. These have included interventions that affect myelin inhibitory molecules and their receptors, or inhibitory chondroitin sulphate proteoglycans, and treatments in which the regenerative potential of axons has been stimulated through growth-factor receptors or manipulation of internal signalling pathways. The article suggests  it is probable that much of the useful recovery seen following treatment of animals with partial spinal cord lesions is due to the stimulation of plasticity.  However, there is a wide gap between basic research with lab animals and clinically useful treatments.

Survivors of spinal cord injury face life-long problems with mobility.  As an attorney representing spinal cord injury survivors, I have often addressed needs for adapted vehicles in life care plans. Now there is news of the first factory-built, wheelchair accessible car – the MV-1 – which is a milestone for the 14 million American adults who use wheelchairs or other mobility devices. We may list this in future life care plans for survivors of catastrophic spinal cord injury who are paraplegic or quadriplegic.

The tragdy of spinal cord injury may be alleviated in the future if researchers at Northwestern University are right.

They are working on use of nanofibers to get disconnected nerve cells to regrow. The idea is to inject a liquid containing  molecules called peptide amphiphiles to generate nerve growth.  Studies with lab animals with severed spinal cords have been promising.

As the parent of a young adult who is deaf due to neurofibromatosis that required severing of auditory nerves, I wonder about the potential use of this to regrow auditory nerves too.