What is known today about recovery after a spinal cord injury
We read the published literature and the trial registries and turn them into an answer you can use: what is available in a clinic, what is being tried in people, what is still early science — and what is missing before anyone can conclude. Every statement here leads to the original it came from.
Where do you want to start?
Work out my own situation
A few short questions about the injury and what matters most to you. You then see which research relates to your goals, what is available in a clinic today and what is still only being studied. No registration. "I don’t know" is a full answer. Real health data intake is currently disabled.
Start with my situation →Look at the research without the questionnaire
Ask in ordinary words, or browse the directions. Every answer says whether it was shown in people, in animals, or not shown at all — and opens the original. You tell us nothing about yourself.
Ask a question →I do research
For researchers, clinicians, laboratories and companies: who in the world works on a topic, which papers and trials exist, the stage a direction has actually reached, and the official page to reach it through.
Open the research view →
Or begin with one of these:
Understand a spinal cord injury in five minutes
Six steps, in order. Each one explains a part of what happened and then opens the studies, the measurements and the sources that are about it.
- 1How the spinal cord is builtWhat this organ is, where it runs, what it is made of inside, and which paths the signal takes. Without this the rest of the map does not read.4 plates
- 2What happens in an injuryThe first mechanical blow, and what continues after it for hours and weeks. It is the second part that most research aims at.4 plates
- 3Which functions may changeMovement, sensation, autonomic function, breathing — and how the level of an injury relates to what changes. Each function here filters real studies.3 plates
- 4How clinicians describe an injuryThe words clinicians use: complete and incomplete, the level, the AIS scale, the syndromes. This is educational context, and it is not self-diagnosis.3 plates
- 5Clinical context and today's careHow an injury presents, which states appear early, which complications are known, and the context rehabilitation works in. Not advice, not a plan.3 plates
- 6What science is trying to changeThe bridge between understanding an injury and the map of research: the seven directions, the ladder of evidence, and what has not been shown yet.2 plates
Where the science stands today
Built from the records this map holds. Every count below is what has been read and checked, not an estimate of the whole field.
Only real records are shown. The map is incomplete on purpose: it holds what has been read and checked, not everything ever published. Where something is missing, the page says so instead of filling the gap.
Technologies, by how far they have travelled
The stage measures DISTANCE, never success: a trial that failed its endpoint has still been run. A technology with no confirmed link to a study is not here at all.
No technology has reached a rung yet.
A stage is derived only where a person has confirmed that a study tested that technology. No such confirmation is in the corpus yet.
What has actually been measured
Ordered, never scored: people before animals, a control group before none, more measurements before fewer. No number is invented to sort by.
AXER-204 in Participants With Chronic Spinal Cord Injury
Human · Open label · Uncontrolled · n=52
- Stage
- not classified
- Evidence
- 45 measurements
The INSPIRE Study: Probable Benefit of the Neuro-Spinal Scaffold for Treatment of AIS A Thoracic Acute Spinal Cord Injury
Human · Open label · Uncontrolled · n=20
- Stage
- Acute · Complete
- Evidence
- 17 measurements
Walking naturally after spinal cord injury using a brain-spine interface.
Human · Case report · Uncontrolled · n=1
- Stage
- not classified
- Evidence
- 5 measurements
- Source
- PubMed 37225984
Restoration of reaching and grasping movements through brain-controlled muscle stimulation in a person with tetraplegia: a proof-of-concept demonstration.
Human · Case report · Uncontrolled · n=1
- Stage
- not classified
- Evidence
- 3 measurements
- Source
- PubMed 28363483
Axon-like aligned conductive CNT/GelMA hydrogel fibers combined with electrical stimulation for spinal cord injury recovery.
Rodent · Preclinical, controlled · Controlled, non-random
- Stage
- not classified
- Evidence
- 8 measurements
- Source
- PubMed 38414842
Chondroitinase ABC Administration in Locomotion Recovery After Spinal Cord Injury: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.
None · Meta-analysis · Not reported · n=34
- Stage
- not classified
- Evidence
- 7 measurements
- Source
- PubMed 37313020
How far this has travelled
This is shown only where a person has confirmed that the search for publications on this technology is finished. It is not weakened to fill a screen, and no zero stands in for it.
Brain–computer interface
Nobody has yet confirmed that the search for publications on this approach is finished.
- How far this has travelled
- Not computed yet
- Evidence
- 0/2 sweeps confirmed, of the two a full index needs
Chondroitinase ABC
Nobody has yet confirmed that the search for publications on this approach is finished.
- How far this has travelled
- Not computed yet
- Evidence
- 0/2 sweeps confirmed, of the two a full index needs
Epidural electrical stimulation
Nobody has yet confirmed that the search for publications on this approach is finished.
- How far this has travelled
- Not computed yet
- Evidence
- 0/2 sweeps confirmed, of the two a full index needs
Neural stem cell transplantation
Nobody has yet confirmed that the search for publications on this approach is finished.
- How far this has travelled
- Not computed yet
- Evidence
- 0/2 sweeps confirmed, of the two a full index needs
Schwann cell transplantation
Nobody has yet confirmed that the search for publications on this approach is finished.
- How far this has travelled
- Not computed yet
- Evidence
- 0/2 sweeps confirmed, of the two a full index needs
Transcutaneous spinal cord stimulation
Nobody has yet confirmed that the search for publications on this approach is finished.
- How far this has travelled
- Not computed yet
- Evidence
- 0/2 sweeps confirmed, of the two a full index needs
Who did the work, and where
Only organisations the records themselves name. Nothing here is inferred from a name.
Foothills Medical Center
Hospital
- Who did the work, and where
- CA
General Hospital of Chinese Armed Police Forces
Hospital
- Stage
- not classified
Hospital Sao Rafael
Hospital
- Stage
- not classified
I.R.C.C.S. Fondazione Santa Lucia
Hospital
- Stage
- not classified
Queen Mary Hospital
Hospital
- Who did the work, and where
- HK
Shanghai Changzheng Hospital
Hospital
- Who did the work, and where
- CN
What is missing, and the next question
An empty cell is the product, not a defect: it is where the evidence is not, and it says which kind of emptiness it is.
Nothing is recorded as missing yet.
Gaps are measured against the table of injury phase against severity, which needs technologies with confirmed studies before it can say what is absent.
How the cord is built, and what exactly breaks
The level of an injury decides what it takes away, so the levels are on the drawing. Open any part of it to see what that structure is — and where the research that works on it has got to.
Open any part of the drawing
Grey matter
The butterfly in the middle of every level: the nerve cell bodies themselves, and the circuits that connect them locally. Damage here removes what that level does.
White matter
The ring around the grey matter: the long fibres running up to the brain and down from it. An injury that cuts these disconnects everything below from everything above, even where the cord below is intact.
Axons — the fibres that do not regrow
A single nerve cell can carry a fibre the length of the cord. In the adult central nervous system a cut fibre does not grow back across the injury on its own — that is the fact the whole field exists to change.
Myelin and the connection at the far end
A fibre that has crossed still has to be insulated and to make a working connection on the other side. Growth without a connection changes nothing a person can feel.
The glial scar
The border the injured cord builds around the damage. It limits the harm and it is also part of what a regrowing fibre cannot get through.
The cavity
Over weeks the damaged tissue is cleared and a fluid-filled space is often left. There is nothing there for a fibre to grow along.
The cord itself
The tissue of the cord, thicker at two enlargements — the cervical one that serves the arms and the lumbosacral one that serves the legs. Cells lost here are not replaced.
The epidural space
The space just outside the cord's covering, along the whole column. It is reached without entering the cord, which is why it is the space an electrode is placed in.
The level of an injury
An injury is named by the lowest segment that still works normally. C5 and T10 are different lives, and almost every number on this map is only comparable within a level and a completeness.
This drawing is anatomy. It states no finding and recommends nothing: what has been shown about any of these, in animals or in people, is on the direction's own page, with the publications it stands on.
Seven directions the research divides into
A repaired cord needs all seven of them. Open one to see what has been done in it, and what has not.
None of the records this map has checked yet lets us say how far a technology has travelled.
This figure — how far the work has travelled — is worked out only where a real study has been linked to the technology it tested. No such link yet exists among the real records this map has read, so a number here would be invented rather than measured, and this map does not invent numbers.
- Mapping the injury0 technologies0 with a computable index
- Remodelling the scar0 technologies0 with a computable index
- Bridging the gap0 technologies0 with a computable index
- Rebuilding the tissue0 technologies0 with a computable index
- Regrowing the fibres0 technologies0 with a computable index
- Reconnecting the circuits0 technologies0 with a computable index
- Retraining the body0 technologies0 with a computable index