Principles of spinal cord rehabilitation

The rehabilitation of patients suffering from spinal cord injury has made tremendous achievements since the establishment of specialized spinal cord injury rehabilitation centers in the middle of the last century. Many of the improvements were achieved by multidisciplinary specialized teams that developed rehabilitation programs which responded to the many needs of these patients by providing a careful combination of multimodal interventions, for example, motor training (upper and lower limbs), improvements in independence, and vocational and recreational activities. However, the focus has now shifted from achieving a longer survival of patients in the first decades by defeating medical complications to improving training and social reintegration (re-employment and independent living) at the end of the last century, to presently where the emphasis is on addressing novel interventions to eventually develop a true treatment of the damaged spinal cord itself.