Acute Spinal Cord Injury in the Cat: Causes, Treatment and Prognosis

Abstract

While any cat may potentially be affected by SCI, there is a tendency for exogenous SCI to be more common in younger individuals and, in the authors' experience, pure-breed cats are very rarely presented. Endogenous SCI can be seen in any breed and is typically a condition of adult cats.

Spinal Cord Injuries in Dogs Part II: Standards of Care, Prognosis and New Perspectives

“…These accompanying injuries may pose more immediate threats to their lives than the damage to the spinal cord. So when evaluating an animal with a neurologic deficit due to a suspected trauma, it is necessary to assess the overall stability of the organism, i. e. function of pulmonary and cardiovascular systems in the first place, then proceed with careful examination of the entire nervous system [9,12,14,45]. The clinical experience has shown that traumatic brain lesions, especially in their mild forms, accompany different traumatic events quite often, and multilevel cord damage is also possible [53,67].…”

“…The basic ABC examination (the patency of the airways, the ability of the dog to breathe, and the effectiveness of circulation) is recommended [9,14,31,67]. Most animals with significant traumatic events will present a state of hypovolemic shock due to inappropriate vasodilation, blood loss, or both.…”

“…The principal composition and function of the central nervous system (CNS) in dogs, cats, pigs and primates are similar [7,8,14,16,22,31]. The spinal cord injuries (SCIs) naturally occur ing these species, but the regeneration of neurons within their brain and spinal cord is limited [68].…”

“…The neurological symptomatology, complication rate and their character may be also similar, and the treatment options and the prognosis resemble the situation in people [2,14,22,31,47,58,77]. The same diagnostic and therapeutic measures are utilised in both, human and veterinary medicine [6,19,29,53,64,69].…”

Spinal Cord Injury

“…19 Smaller dogs may be splinted along the ventral cervical region, whereas larger dogs often need dorsal and ventral, or even circumferential splinting. 20 Pain control for animals with spinal cord injury often requires pure opioid agonists (fentanyl, hydromorphone, oxymorphone, or morphine) or a partial opioid agonist (buprenorphine). Splinting the thoracic or lumbar vertebral column is more challenging because of the anatomic location.…”