info@myelopathy.org

Myelopathy.org and Myelopathy Support on Facebook have been a great help for both me and my wife since my diagnosis in 2016. Since then, life has been difficult to say the least. Cervical myelopathy, and the accidents it has caused, have led to me going under the knife for no less than six major surgeries. These have significantly affected my body and its ability to cope with everyday life.

I created a ‘lucky numbers’ board featuring 1-100. I then made a list of those numbers with spaces next to them for people to write down their names and telephone numbers. It cost £1 per number and I decided on a winning pay-out of £25 which, if all the numbers had been taken, would deliver a tidy profit of £75 for Myelopathy.org. 

I set my table up in the club room. I took along some laminated photos of people’s CT scans, including my own, as visual aids. I also made copies of one of the charity’s media releases about the condition and the need for early diagnosis, and the basic facts about myelopathy. These are part of the Myelopathy.org fundraising pack. 

It was very interesting to see how people reacted to the photographs and then responded to the information in the leaflets and that I was able to supply about myelopathy. 

The fundraising experience was a positive one and the fact that I was able to raise £71.10 (no idea where the 10p came from) was a bonus. I am now really looking forward to taking part in the next fundraising event. So, if you have any ideas or want to hold a fundraiser yourself, please let me or one of the Myelopathy.org team know.

My top five tips for fundraising.
1) Plan where you want to hold your fundraiser and contact relevant authority/fête organiser/owner etc for permission

2) Share, share, share. Use social media, such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram etc, to gain maximum promotion and coverage for your fundraising activity.

3) Make it personal. Tell your own story so that people can understand more about your experiences and your reasons for fundraising. Sometimes that personal touch/story can elicit donations.

4) Remember your inspiration. There’s a reason why you are supporting this cause. Hold on to your inspiration and bring all that enthusiasm to your fundraising activities.

5) Have fun. If you are not enjoying yourself, you will give off all the wrong vibes. So, smile and perhaps rope in a friend or two to help so that you can jolly each other along.

By Timothy Boerger
Reviewed by B.Davies
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Neck Muscles and CSM– An Update Part 2 of 2
​This second of a 2-part mini-series on the properties of muscles in the neck and how they impact outcomes of surgery. We previously looked at this following an early piece of research from North America.  This series will serve as an update on this research.

Why was this study conducted?
For a short recap of the previous 2 blogs related to this: how much fat there is within muscles has been related to symptoms of myelopathy. Additionally, cervical lordosis, or, the curve of the neck, is believed to be related to outcomes following laminoplasty.1 

How was the study conducted?
This study performed a pre-operative MRI at which they performed measurements of the neck muscles. They then tracked the participants for 12 months post cervical laminoplasty to assess the curvature of the neck with x-ray.

What was discovered?
The main finding was that muscle size at multiple vertebral levels in the neck is related to loss of curve following surgery. The smaller the neck muscle size, the greater loss of neck curve.

Why is this important?
This is further evidence suggesting the muscles in your neck are important in myelopathy.  It should be noted that this study only looked at patients who underwent a laminoplasty, one of many different types of surgical procedure for myelopathy (i.e. it is unclear whether this finding would be applicable to other types of surgery such as ACDF).
​ 
Whilst this link is again being drawn, it remains to be seen whether or not treatments to help neck musculature could make a difference to patients.  The authors in this study suggest it could better advise on the type of surgery that is to be performed.  Drilling down to these questions will be an important next step for this line of research. 

Have you had any therapy to strengthen your neck pre- or post- surgery? Did it help?
    
Reference
Lee BJ et al. Importance of the Preoperative Cross-Sectional Area of the Semispinalis Cervicis as a Risk Factor for Loss of Lordosis after Laminoplasty in Patients with Cervical Spondylotic Myelopathy. Euro Spine J. epub 2018: 1-10

The authors used a national insurance claims dataset of 22 million people in Taiwan and identified 27,947 patients with CS, they then matched this with a similar number of non-CS patients of a similar age and gender distribution, as well as matching numbers of patients with other health problems such as hypertension, diabetes, asthma and stroke. This was to allow them to compare the incidence of ACS between the groups without other diseases invalidating the comparison. 

All the patients were followed up until they had a diagnosis of ACS, died, or the end of the research period occurred at the end of 2011. After this, the number of ACS events in each group were measured as a rate over the number of “person years”. This being the number of times a diagnosis of ACS was made for every year a patient lived.
 
In this paper, the incidence of ACS was measured as number of ACS/1000-person years. These were then compared between various groups to obtain a ratio, to determine the relative risk of ACS occurring in a person with CS compared to someone without ACS in a similar state of health.

Overall, the study showed that patients with CS were 13% more likely to have an ACS, than patients without CS. This was determined ‘statistically significant’, but in real terms this represents a very small increase from 3.9/1000-person years to 4.27/1000-person years in rates of ACS diagnosis. 

Looking in more detail at the patients with CS, for those with myelopathy the risk was slightly higher, increasing by 20% but interestingly, it seems treatment of CS has an effect in reducing ACS risk:
– Patients receiving spinal decompression surgery were less likely to have an ACS (27% reduction)
– Patients receiving rehabilitative therapy were less likely to have an ACS (33% reduction) 

The statistical difference between the form of treatment for CS and reducing ACS risk was not significant.  

This is a good question, and not entirely clear.  The researchers suggested that it may be to do with the sympathetic trunk. The cervical sympathetic trunk consists of collections of nerve cells bodies, called ganglia, aligned along the front of the spine.  The ganglion in the neck are involved in control of the cardiovascular system.  This special group of nerves also connect with the ligaments of the spinal column, such as the posterior longitudinal ligament, and the lining of the spinal cord. Irritation to these structures is thought to cause the sympathetic nervous system to increase its output, for example to fibers in blood vessels around the body, causing them to constrict and causing hypertension, which contributes to a diagnosis of ACS.

This is not the first study to show a relationship between CSM and Cardiovascular health (we have previously described a study specifically looking at high blood pressure), however it is the first to show an increased risk of a heart attack.

There are a number of limitations to this study, and the actually increases in risk are relatively small.  But it adds to the research of CSM and Cardiovascular disease, and once again shows the far reaching impacts of CSM.    

Shih-Yi Lin et al. Risk of acute coronary syndrome in patients with cervical spondylosis ​Atherosclerosis 2018

[1]M. Singh, I. Khurana, Z. Kundu, A. Aggarwal, Link of sympathetic activity with cardiovascular risk in patients of cervical spondylosis, Int. J. Clin. Exp. Pathol. 3 (2016) 41e44 
[2]M. Singh, I. Khurana, Z.S. Kundu, A. Aggarwal, Galvanic skin response in pa- tients with cervical spondylosis, IJHSR 6 (2016) 148e152.
[3] N. Marina, A.G. Teschemacher, S. Kasparov, A.V. Gourine, Glia, sympathetic activity and cardiovascular disease, Exp. Physiol. 101 (2016) 565e576,