What is range of motion and why is it important to maintain after a spinal cord injury? - Elaine Rogers, PT

Range of motion is the amount of movement that’s available at any given joint in our body. So, for instance, my wrist, it’s how far does it bend back and how far does it bend forward. That’s important because it allows our body to move, and in order to be able to move appropriately, we need to have as much flexibility and as much motion in every single joint in our body as normal parameters. With a spinal cord injury that can be impacted by loss of muscle use where the joints don’t get moved as frequently-people may be sitting in their chair 15 hours a day and we don’t want them to get stuck in a bent-chair seated position, we want them to be able to stretch out straight and lie down in bed and be in a full relaxed position. So range of motion as we refer to it in spinal cord injury, is the act of taking somebody through the full movement of each of their joints in order to preserve that movement. The physical therapist will-well there are several ways when somebody is newly injured and not able to do it themselves-the physical therapist will do the movement for the person, and as the person starts to learn better mobility skills in moving their body around in space, we will teach that person how to do that themselves so they stretch each joints just in the same way that if you don’t have a spinal cord injury, you need to do a stretching program. We teach you how to do your own self-stretching program, and if you’re not able to do your own self-stretching program, we’ll teach how to teach somebody else to do it for you, and what your needs are in that area.