He had a shearing type of injury through his upper back," says Dr. Ken Thomas, an orthopaedic surgeon and Straschnitzki's current doctor at the Foothills Medical Centre in Calgary.
"The spinal cord passes through the vertebral bodies. So when you shear that spinal column, the spinal cord gets hung up and pinched and bruised."
Emergency surgery
When Straschnitzki arrived at Royal University Hospital in Saskatoon the night of the accident, he was alert and able to tell the doctors he couldn't feel anything in his legs.
A detailed neurological examination revealed he had a fracture between the second and third vertebrae of the thoracic spine, quite a rigid part of the spinal column that connects to the ribs.
He was unable to move anything below his mid chest.
When he was thrown from the bus, it appears "he landed on his shoulders on the ground with neck flexed, and with his head curled up like you'd do in a somersault," says Dr. Daryl Fourney, the neurosurgeon on call that night.
"It was like a bad somersault, there was too much flexion and compression of the vertebrae."
Current research suggests decompressing the spine as quickly as possible, within 24 hours of the injury, can yield the best results — although it's not always feasible to do complex spinal surgery in that kind of timeframe.
In Straschnitzki's case it was, and the next morning he underwent a four-and-a-half hour operation to realign his vertebrae so as not to further pinch the spinal cord. Dr. Fourney removed a ruptured disc and some bone to stabilize the spine, then held it in place with tiny screws.
"He did fine through the surgery," the doctor says.
But the injury was severe.
"I had the discussions with Ryan and his family," Dr. Fourney explains. "The chance of significant recovery, with current technology in 2018, is poor. It is unlikely he will regain any meaningful function below the level of the injury."
http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/ryan-straschnitzki-spine-injury-rehab-broncos-bus-crash-1.4642860
Update on Ryan Straschnitzki's condition. I hope and pray some progress can be made.
