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I thought spina bifida was somewhat progressive. My Aunt has it, and could 'walk' with crutches when young, then needed leg braces, and is now in a wheelchair.

• Fezzik 8y ago
  Not to be terse, but the first sentence of the article is: “Surgeons at King's College Hospital say the procedure is not a cure, but could be the difference between some children learning to walk or not...”
  • benj111 8y ago
    The title says 'fix' it isn't apparent to me where the line between fix and cure lies. I assume somewhere between stopping further damage and starting from a 'better' base, where precisely I don't know, thus my question.
    • wincy 8y ago
      There’s a lot of issues this doesn’t fix, like a lot (90%+) of spina bifida cases require shunts to drain cranial spinal fluid. Your spinal cord would normally do that. Without that the child will develop hydrocephalus which can cause all sorts of mental issues, in addition to giving the child a sort of “alien head” problem which impacts their ability to fit in. Chiari malformation isn’t fixed by this, which can cause apnea and breath holding in some spina bifida cases. A decent number of children with Chiari 2 get a tracheostomy, which then requires 24 hour care, as the child can no longer audibly cry when on a ventilator, since the vocal cords are bypassed.
• arkades 8y ago
  Long term mobility prognosis depends very heavily on the exact level of the spine where the myelomeningocele occurs. It’s not really “progressive”, though, in the sense that that term is used medically - it’s more just “fragile.” A progressive disease is one in which the disease process itself continues to operate. In spina bifida the disease process is complete by birth, but the result can be a fragile anatomy prone to subsequent deterioration. Saffron: I didn’t kill him either. Mal: No, don’t reckon there’s many you killed. Just put him in a position to die easy.
  • falcor84 8y ago
    Wow, I applaud the use of this quote. I have seen references to situations from the Whedonverse used to improve understanding in many areas, but never before in medicine.
  • benj111 8y ago
    Ok does it make it less fragile then? Are we talking about someone who has 10 years longer without a wheelchair, or are they never expected to need a wheelchair?
    • arkades 8y ago
      It does make it less fragile, by putting the spinal nerves back into the protective bones of the spine. We have a shortage of long term data, but studies on kids out to ten years show higher rates of ambulation, and better quality of ambulation.
      • benj111 8y ago
        Ok thanks, so we're talking about someone who could walk with crutches at birth, potentially being able to walk with crutches indefinitely then?
        • Filligree 8y ago
          Unlikely, but if they can at least avoid crutches in their childhood then... that isn't nothing. That's a lot, actually. They'll probably need them eventually. Then again, technology does keep progressing. Maybe this will be like many other diseases in the past, and it'll turn out that we've reached escape velocity -- the repairs will outdo the damage. There's no way to know yet. Even so, this article is very good news.
• ChrisWilding 8y ago
  My brother was the similar, could walk medium distances when young but these days he uses a wheelchair most of the time and only walks very short distances occasionally. I think it's mostly because his upper body has grown but his legs are less muscular and haven't been able to keep up and support his weight as well