Spinal Injuries and Pain Flashcards
What is a paraplegic?
-Loss of movement in lower limbs (below C8)
What is a quadriplegic?
-Loss of movement of all above limbs (C8 and above)
What is monoplegia?
-1 limb affected
What is hemiplegia?
-Right or left side affected
What is a complete spinal cord injury?
- Completely severed
- Loose both anterior (motor neurons) and posterior (sensory neurons)
What is incomplete spinal cord injury?
-Only parts of the spine are affected
What is spinal shock?
- “Concussion of the spine”
- Loss of bowel and bladder control
- Vasodilation
- Reduced sympathetic tone.
- Reduced sweating below the affected area (because sweating is caused by the sympathetic tone and that is damaged)
What is spasticity?
- Loss of inhibitory messages down from the brain
- Causes reflexes to continue
What is spinal ganglia?
- Close to the spinal cord
- More likely to disrupt the sympathetic nervous system
What is poikilothermy?
- When an organism attains the temperature of the environment.
- Decreased sympathetic and sweating
Why is there an increased risk of an individual getting deep vein thrombosis when they have a spinal cord injury?
- Decreased mobility
- Vasodilation can lead to blood pools
- Decreased skeletal muscle pump affected and decreased venous return.
-Compression stockings can help.
What are the main types of pain?
-Emotion and Sensory.
What is acute pain?
-The body has a reflex to move away from the pain (Eg. touching a stove)
What are Nociceptors =
-Pain receptors (Blunt force, extreme hot/ cold temperatures).
What is chronic pain?
- Cant localise the pain.
- Achy and dull.
What is Referred pain?
- Feel pain in different places to the initial source.
- Because sensory travels on the same pathway as the skin, by the time it reaches the brain it is confused.
What is Visceral pain?
- Pain from organs (Visera).
- Eg. Heart attack. Pain may be felt in arm, jaw, shoulder and gallbladder.
What is Endogenous opioid?
- The body sends endogenous opioids to the brain to help deal with the pain.
- The opioids bind to opioid receptors and stop the pain impulse from getting to the brain, therefore, there is no perception of pain.
What region is involved in understanding pain?
-Somatosensory cortex= Localising pain.
