Improving the lives of veterans with spinal cord injury

By Partnership for Public Service December 30 at 5:49 PM

Dr. William Bauman has worked tirelessly for many years at a Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) hospital in New York to produce a series of medical advances and new drug therapies that have improved the lives of those with spinal cord injuries.

Pairing science and clinical practice, Bauman and his team have concentrated on the secondary and often life-threatening consequences of spinal cord injury, and devised remedies to help alleviate patient suffering.

William Bauman has led a team of talented doctors in internal medicine, neurology, rehabilitation medicine, physiology and molecular biology to address many of the largely neglected but highly relevant issues that have faced those with spinal cord injury, said Dr. Erik Langhoff, director of the James J. Peters VA Medical Center in the Bronx where Bauman works.

They have been focused on investigating what goes wrong with the body after spinal cord injury and have developed innovative approaches and effective interventions to improve the health and quality of life for persons who are paralyzed, he said.

After years of work, Bauman in 2001 established the VAs Rehabilitation Research & Development National Center of Excellence for the Medical Consequences of Spinal Cord Injury in the Bronx, where colleagues most recently tested a new bionic walking assistance system that enables individuals with paralysis to stand, walk and climb stairs.

The work of Bauman and his VA colleagues has led to the realization that persons with spinal cord injury are at a markedly increased risk of a number of ailments, including heart disease and an asthma-like lung condition common in those with higher levels of paralysis. They have developed approaches to treat these aliments and devised strategies to deal with other nagging issues, including a way for paralyzed patients to undergo successful colonoscopies.

With other researchers in their unit, Bauman also has helped formulate novel drug combinations to raise low blood pressure, overseen the development of animal and clinical treatments to reduce bone loss shortly after spinal cord injury, and advanced the understanding and treatment of chronic, non-healing pressure ulcers. Investigators under Baumans direction also are making strides toward improving the understanding of body temperature regulation and the effect of swings in body temperature on ones ability to think.

Not long ago, a spinal cord injury was tantamount to an early death sentence, not because of the immediate effects of a paralyzing injury, but because of the many medical complications that followed, said Dr. Michael E. Selzer, director of the Center for Neural Repair and Rehabilitation at Shriners Hospitals in Philadelphia. Now these patients have an almost normal life span and a greatly improved quality of life.

Selzer described Bauman as the single most important scientist and physician leading the way to improved medical management of persons with spinal cord injury.

Excerpt from:
Improving the lives of veterans with spinal cord injury