Loss of Function Years after SCI:
When to Have Untethering Surgery

Following spinal cord injury, most of us who are paralyzed think in terms of what has been lost below the level of injury. But what is more worrisome is the possibility that damage can also go the other way, ascending to higher levels in the cord, resulting in possible additional motor and sensory loss, increased spasticity, pain and more. Worse yet, it can happen years after the initial injury.

Brook McCall is weighing her options. She is worried. Seventeen years ago when she left Craig Hospital with a C4 SCI from a fall, she had been told, almost as an afterthought, that she had a small, bubble-sized cyst just above her C4 damaged cord, and