Autonomic Nervous System and Spinal Cord Injury

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Anatomy of the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS)

There are two main functions of the autonomic nervous system:

• regulating visceral functions
• maintaining homeostasis within the human body

ANS and Spinal Cord Injury (SCI)

After a spinal cord injury, all three subsystems of the autonomic nervous system are affected due to their anatomical location, loss of supraspinal influence, and sustained responses to afferent stimuli. The pathophysiological responses from the ANS can be as follows:

pinal cord injury (SCI) influences all three components of the ANS due to their relative anatomical locations, loss of supraspinal influence and unabated responses to afferent stimuli, resulting in pathophysiological responses in the cardiovascular, thermoregulatory, respiratory, gastrointestinal, and genitourinary systems that contribute to the comorbidities and mortality of SCI"

Firstly, blood pressure: during spinal or neurogenic shock, low resting arterial blood pressure with postural hypotension. And thirdly, with autonomic dysreflexia in the less acute stage. Then heart rate: bradycardia or arrhythmias. Thermoregulation, including poikilothermia; quad fever; which is a idiopathic hyperpyrexia; and exercise-induced fever. Sweating: either hyperhidrosis or hypohidrosis. Bladder and bowel function or dysfunction. Sexual function affecting arousal, ejaculation, and orgasm. Pregnancy, labour, and breastfeeding can be affected. And other procedures, such as functional electrical stimulation, surgery, invasive investigational procedures such as urodynamic studies. And then also during pain or injury: stretches, fractures, or UTIs.

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