Optimisation de la récupération fonctionnelle lors de l’hospitalisation aigüe suite à une lésion traumatique de la moelle épinière

Introduction and objectives: Traumatic Spinal cord injuries (TSCI) have devastating consequences. To minimise the deficits incurred, patients undertake a rehabilitation process consisting of four phases: acute care hospitalization, intensive functional rehabilitation, community reintegration and maintenance of gains. The acute care hospitalization represents an important part of the clinical pathway as many important decisions about the subsequent rehabilitation plan are taken. It also represents a unique period to minimize medical complications and optimize functional recovery early in the rehabilitation process. Thus, the clinical evolution during the acute care shouldn’t be neglected as it has been shown to influence medium to long term outcome. In particular, pressure injuries (PI) prevention is essential as the acute hospitalization represents the period with the highest PI risk and its occurrence adversely affects long-term functional recovery.Yet, the impact of multiple factors on the occurrence of PI during acute care specifically as well as the goals that must be prioritized by the acute rehabilitation team to optimize the functional outcome at discharge from acute care remain imprecise. Thus, the main objective of this work is to identify how the acute rehabilitation team may optimize functional recovery during acute care and decrease the occurrence of PI following a TSCI.  Methods and results: A prospective cohort study of sixty-one patients and the review of a prospective database of 301 patients with acute TSCI admitted to a SCI-specialized level-1 trauma center were completed. The mean total spinal cord independence measure (SCIM) score at discharge was 42.1 ±25.2 after a mean acute care length of stay (LOS) of 22.7 ±14.4 days. Hierarchical multivariate linear regression analyses showed that when controlled for the severity of the TSCI, longer LOS was significantly associated with poorer functional outcome at discharge from acute care. Hierarchical multivariate logistic regression analyses showed that when controlling for the level and severity of the TSCI, the occurrence of pneumonia (OR=2.1, CI= 1.1-4.1) was significantly associated with the occurrence of PI. Greater admission delay to our SCI-specialised level-1 trauma center, the occurrence of medical complications (PI, pneumonia and urinary tract infection) and lesser total daily therapy (physiotherapy and occupational therapy) resulted in significantly longer acute care LOS when controlled for possible non-modifiable cofounding factors.  Conclusions: In order to optimize functional outcome at discharge from acute care, the rehabilitation team must address factors that influence acute care LOS, particularly early transfer to SCI-specialized trauma centers, medical complications prevention (PI, pneumonia, urinary tract infection) and the optimization of therapy time, in order to decrease acute care length of stay and thus optimize the patient’s clinical evolution. As patients with higher and more severe TSCI, as well as those developing a pneumonia during acute care are at higher risk of developing PI, we believe they should be prioritized to receive a larger volume of therapy and more aggressive prevention protocols. Finally, functional gains during the acute care hospitalisation may be underestimated by the SCIM, which do not measure interventions during acute rehabilitation that are aimed towards ensuring strong foundations (e.g. trunk balance) to undertake efficient IFR.

Keyphrases: spinal cord injury, traumatic, acute care, functional outcome, pressure injury, spinal cord