Clinical guideline for perioperative management of acute spinal cord injury

The incidence of acute spinal cord injury is increasing year by year, but there still lacks clinical guideline for perioperative management. In order to provide a standardized management for the perioperative period of acute spinal cord injury, the specialists from Spinal Disease Prevention and Control Group, Spinal Cord Injury Disease Prevention Society of Chinese Preventive Medicine Committee and Basic Research Group, Spinal Cord Committee of Chinese Society of Rehabilitation Medicine have developed a guideline after retrieval of domestic and foreign literature, discussion and voting on the basis of practical and scientific principles. This guideline focuses on 12 perioperative management issues of acute spinal cord injury, involving admission evaluation, admission diagnosis, complications management, preoperative preparation, surgical indication, timing selection, surgical mode selection, complications management, pain management, drug treatment, rapid rehabilitation and nursing care. Based on evidence-based medicine, the aim of this guideline is to provide scientific advices for perioperative management after acute spinal cord injury so as to effectively improve the surgical treatment and prognosis of spinal cord injury. Key words: Spinal cord injuries; Perioperative care; Practice guideline