Presented in the 5 th world congress of physical Medicine & Rehabilitation 2009 – Istanbule – Turkey

www.isprm2009.org

Hadi Shojaei, Mohammad Hassan Azma, Farahnaz Falahati, Mohammad Reza Sorosh
Janbazan medical and engineering research center(JMERC)

OBJECTIVES: Spinal cord injury (SCI) is a devastating condition often affecting young and healthy individuals around the world. This debilitating condition not only creates enormous physical and emotional cost to individuals but also is a significant financial burden to society at large. Iran-Iraq war left more than 400 Spinal cord injured veterans who are commonly suffering from various musculoskeletal complications and this study was undertaken to understand the upper limbs musculoskeletal complications of cervical Spinal Cord Injured athlete.

MATERIAL-METHODS: From 140 cervical cord injured Iranian war-survivors, a cross-sectional study conducted among 44 quadriplegic veterans who attended in Kish Island for ping pong sport and recreational program in 2003.
All of them were interviewed and examined by a trained physical and rehabilitation specialist and 2 questionnaire (demographic & examination questionnaire) were completed. Data were analyzed using SPSS software.
RESULTS: all of them were men with mean age of 39 years and the mean of duration of their spinal cord injury was18 years. All used wheelchair for transport.
Pain was the most complain specially shoulder pain, and contracture, spasm and Maign’s syndrome or Dearrangement Intervertebral Minor (DIM) were the commonest complications in their exams and most of them were resistant to routine physical therapies and medications.The later one, Maign’s syndrome, is an important syndrome that recently well introduced by Physiatrists.whih requires the manual therapy as the unique therapeutic method.
CONCLUSION: Based upon these findings, it is clear that the screening program and periodic evaluation of quadriplegic patients in Iran are priority to early diagnosis and prevention of severe complications such as pain which is resistant to regular and routine physical therapies.