1. RAISING AWARENESS
What strategies can increase awareness and understanding of DCM amongst healthcare professionals and the public? Can these strategies help improve timely diagnosis and management of DCM? [1]
This top-ranked research priority is the clear mandate of Myelopathy.org. The charity came into being to raise awareness of DCM among medical professionals and the general public. By providing a greater level of general awareness, we will reduce time to diagnosis, which will vastly improve clinical outcomes in DCM. Myelopathy.org aims to promote the global recognition of DCM as the world’s most common spinal cord injury in adults with devastating but largely preventable consequences.
Michael Fehlings discusses the global prevalence of DCM and articulates the need for early diagnosis.
A lack of awareness contributes to a relative lack of research funding and research activity.
How is Myelopathy.org and RECODE-DCM working to address this priority?
We have created the RECODE-DCM ‘Think Tank’, bringing together professionals of all backgrounds from around the world. The aim is to help our community generate the knowledge we need, and ensure it gets into the clinic as fast as possible. Read more here.
Learn more about Research Priority 1 on the Myelopathy Matters podcast
In 2020, AO Spine took over the Myelopathy Matters podcast to tackle the Top 10 Research Priorities for DCM. In this episode, Ben Davies and Michelle Starkey talk with Michael Fehlings, Tammy Blizzard, James Milligan and Mark Kotter about raising awareness. Why is it so difficult even if we are talking about the commonest cause of adult spinal cord impairment? And how can we get the word out there to the medical community and the general public?
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