All the information needed to initiate and control movement travels down the spinal cord from the brain to the muscles of the body.

Signals from every part of the body also pass up the spinal cord. After spinal cord injury, damaged neurons are unable to conduct signals and the injured person loses sensory information and muscle control, causing paralysis. Severing contact between the brain and other organs has further devastating and permanent consequences, such as loss of bladder and bowel control, loss of sexual function, and loss of the ability to control body temperature and blood pressure.

The degree of paralysis resulting from spinal cord injury depends on which part of the spinal cord is injured. Injuries which are higher up the spinal cord (closer to the head) cause more paralysis than those which are lower down.

An SCI in the neck results in paralysis of both the arms and the legs (called tetraplegia or quadriplegia). Injuries lower down the spinal cord cause loss of control of leg muscles (called paraplegia).

Some statistics about SCI:

There are an estimated 40,000 spinal cord injured people in the UK and Ireland alone – a new person is injured every eight hours.

The majority of the injuries occur amongst 16 to 35 year olds.  The most common causes are falls and road traffic accidents but there are many victims of sporting accidents – principally riding horses, diving and rugby.

Thanks to modern medicine, life expectancy for spinal cord injured people is near normal. This is
positive news, but the long-term demands on medical and support resources are huge.

In the UK, the current annual cost of caring for people paralysed by spinal cord injury is conservatively estimated at more than £500 million.

21% of those discharged from Spinal Cord Injury Centres go to nursing homes, hospitals or other institutionalised settings rather than their own homes

20% of people leave Spinal Cord Injury Centres clinically depressed