Patient Blogs
| Beike - Zuo Jian |
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| Spinal Cord Injuries | |
| Tuesday, 27 December 2005 17:56 | |
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PATIENT EXPERIENCE - S P I N A L C O R D I N J U R Y
NAME: Zuo Jian COUNTRY: China AGE: 37 DIAGNOSIS: Spinal Cord Injury From the Shenzhen Economic Daily Note: This is a translation of an article from the Shenzhen Economic Daily with added information from talking to Dr. Yang, the doctor who gave Zuo Jian a check-up. Nanshan Hospital used hematopoietic (umbilical cord blood) stem cell injections to treat patients from other provinces and gave them hope to have a cure in the future. The head of the hospital, Yang Jiayong, sent two doctors to a small village of Hunan province to pay follow up visit to the first patient, a paraplegic construction worker, Zuo Jian, who had the stem cell injections in August and September. Nanshan Hospital has treated eleven patients with stem cells. The first patient was a construction worker from the Shenzhen Construction Company. He is thirty-seven years old and is from the Hunan province. In January of 2005, a chain block fell on his back resulting in a T12-L1 complete spinal cord injury. He lost all the feeling and motor ability from the waist down. He could not control his bowel movements and had to use a catheter for urination.On July 3 rd he had an operation to fuse his spine. On August 29th, he had the first of three stem cells injections at Nan Shan hospital. In fact, he was supposed to have four injections but after the third he felt there was no improvement so he decided not to have t he fourth. Zuo Jian went back to his hometown in Changsha and had forty one days of rehabilitation at Zhong Nan University Hospital. See 'Zuo Jian Stands' Up Video In the early December, his superior at the construction company came to Nanshan Hospital and told the doctor: “Zuo Jian can stand up by himself. And his right leg can rise up more than 20 centimeters.” The doctors were all very excited because the hospital was new to stem cell treatments and they never expected the results to be so encouraging. They had seen immediate results with ALS patients but had not seen much improvement from the spinal cord injury patients they had treated. They were so excited that the Yang Jiayong asked the head of the rehabilitation department to “go personally to Zuo Jian’s hometown to do a thorough investigation to determine how the effect of the treatment really was.” Yang Jiayong said: “The traditional treatment for spinal cord injury is not very effective but a large number of patients are quite young so they have a chance for science to advance enough to give them effective treatments. If we can cure them, it will be meaningful for them and the whole society. This is a good step in that direction.” On Dec. 16th, Yang Wanzhang, director of the rehabilitation department, and Dr. Jiang Shan went to Changsha by train, then, the next day, they reached the countryside by bus. When they go to Zuo Jian’s home, Zuo Jian stood up from the wheelchair and got himself to the bed with a walker to have the check-up. Dr. Yang Wanzhang said: “We were very surprised to see that he could stand up.” When they did performed the check up, they found that except fo the upper left leg, the patient had feeling everywhere else. His right hip muscle was strong enough tom ove his right leg up 45 degrees but his left leg could move only slightly. While there was some improvement, he did not fully recover his sexual function. His wife said: “He can go to the bathroom by himself. We believe he can be better and better with more rehabiliation.” Nanshan Hospital was the first in Shenzhen and the third hospital in Guangdong province to use umbilical cord stem cell injections as a clinical treatment. Stem cells provide a new potential treatment for patients with hemiplegia, paraplegia, quadriplegia, multiple sclerosis, progressive muscular dystrophy, senile dementia and other diseases. Dr. Yang Jianyong said: “the late improvements of stem cells with spinal cord injury is not like the rapid effects you see with antibiotics. We were originally looking for the immediate effects of the stem cell injections like we had seen with the ALS patients. However, in the future, we will be looking for effects later and push for intense rehabilitation to increase their strength.”
Before July 3rd Operation
After July 3rd Operation and before the stem cell injections.
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| Last Updated on Thursday, 26 March 2009 00:54 |
