New treatment could help Americans with spinal cord injuries

There's a new treatment that could help millions of American's living with spinal cord injuries. It's called epidural stimulation.

Dustin Shilcox talks how about the treatment has helped him. Shillcox was injured on August 26, 2010, when he was 26 years old. Dustin was drivinga van in nearby Rock Springs when a tire blew out and sent his van into a cable that lined the median.

The van flipped and he was flung from the driver's side window. Dustin broke his back, sternum, elbow, four ribs and his lungs collapsed; he had bleeding to the brain and injured his spine at T5, which left him paralyzed from the chest down.

Dustin was implanted in January 2013 and has since resumed an active outdoor lifestyle with his family, including snow machining.

The Big Idea is the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation's campaign to raise $15 million to fund the next phase of epidural stimulation research and bring a potentially life-changing therapy to individuals living with spinal cord injury (SCI).

Visit http://www.ReeveBigIdea.org for campaign details, videos and more information.

Epidural stimulation is the first promising therapy to demonstrate that a damaged spinal cord may be repaired. Presently, there are no other effective evidence-based treatments for SCI.

In a recently published study, Dustin and three other young men who had been paralyzed for years achieved groundbreaking progress -- moving their legs and standing -- as a result of epidural stimulation of the spinal cord.

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New treatment could help Americans with spinal cord injuries