Spinal cord injuries are a very scary and serious injury for a person to obtain. They can happen in a multitude of ways and range from short term to long term impacts on your health. A spinal cord injury can lead to prolonged physical therapy and medical bills, for some even death. If a spinal injury is caused by another, you or your loved one could be entitled to compensation for your injury. Today we will discuss the various categories of spinal cord injuries, but before that let us take a look at how one might get a spinal cord injury in the first place.

What are the Different Causes of a Spinal Cord Injury?
Injuries such as these can happen in so many way, these are just a few of the most common ones seen today. Some causes of spinal cord injuries could be but not limited to:

Motor vehicle accidents are the leading cause of spinal cord injuries in the United States today. The CDC released research data from 2016 saying 46% of spinal cord injuries were due to motor vehicle accidents. These also included motorcycle accidents, commercial truck accidents, bicycle accidents, and even pedestrian accidents because someone was struck by a vehicle while walking.

Another large cause of spinal cord injuries would attribute to falls. Which is also the largest cause of workplace accidents in the United States. And it is also the biggest cause of injury for senior citizens in America.

The next in line for causing the most spinal cord injures is crime. Criminal violence can lead to these types of injuries through deep knife wounds and gunshots. Also, other types of assault through the act of criminal violence.

Sports injuries inevitably fall under this category of causes of spinal cord injuries. Sports such as football, hockey, baseball, soccer, and basketball are the main culprits. But other athletic activities such as diving can lead to spinal injuries, especially diving in shallow, dark water.

Lastly, medical malpractice is one of the main causes of spinal cord injuries. It could be from a misdiagnosis or surgical error, these can also make a prior spinal cord injury even worse.

Now that we know some of the major causes of how one would obtain an injury to their spinal cord, let us discuss the categories of a spinal cord injury.

Categories of Spinal Cord Injuries
These injuries are categorized in two different ways, they can be either complete or incomplete spinal cord injuries. Both can have a devastating impact on a person’s life and financial wellbeing, today we will start by discussing incomplete spinal cord injuries.

Incomplete Spinal Cord Injuries
Incomplete spinal cord injuries happen more often then complete ones do. They are broken up into 3 separate categories depending how the injury effected the spine.
These categories are:

• Anterior Cord Syndrome – this happens when the sensory pathways and motor become damaged. This type of injury is found in the spinal cords front.

• Central Cord Syndrome – this spinal injury involves damage to the nerve and same as its name, the injury is placed in the central part of the spinal cord.

• Brown-Sequard Syndrome – this last category of incomplete spinal cord injuries happens when only one side of the said spinal cord becomes injured.

Any of these injuries can be very serious, you should contact a medical professional if you believe you have any of these injuries. After that you should contact a spinal cord injury today so they can get you the compensation you deserve if your injury was due to someone else’s negligence.

Complete Spine Injury

• Complete spinal cord injuries are more severe than incomplete but also happen less often. These types of injuries are broken up into 3 categories, they are as follows:

• Tetraplegia – This type is the most severe of the three complete spine injuries. It causes paralysis and it is possible that every limb will be affected.

• Paraplegia – when this type of injury occurs, all movement and sensation in the body parts are lost.

• Triplegia – this usually happens from complications due to the injuries sustained in the incomplete spinal injuries’ classification.

Symptoms of a Spinal Cord injury

Now that we know the categories of spinal cord injuries, let us take a look at some of the symptoms one may have. Some symptoms include:

• Inability to move limbs or other parts of body. Can also be weakness of the body parts.
• Loss f bladder control and bowel control
• Not being able to feel various sensations like the cold or even heat.
• Tingling, numbness, and or nerve pain
• One’s sexual ability have changed
• Having problems breathing
• Neck pain and back pain, or the feeling of pressure on the neck and or back

If you believe you are showing any of these signs or symptoms you should contact a healthcare professional immediately. Then contact a spinal cord injury attorney to see how they can help. A spinal cord injury attorney can help fight for you if your injury was due to someone else’s negligence. They can help you get money for medical bills and other various medical expenses. A spinal cord injury attorney can also get you compensation for lost wages if you are unable to work due to your injury. One hopes that no one will suffer a serious spinal cord injury, but id you do contact a local spinal cord injury attorney today. They will know the steps it takes in order to get you the compensation you deserve.