Increasing awareness of autonomic dysreflexia

Sadly, we all know that autonomic dysreflexia (AD) isn’t widely understood.

We’re constantly working with healthcare professionals to help them recognise the symptoms and understand the condition, but we’ve recently had a massive breakthrough, thanks to Clinical specialist Mark Jarratt and Support coordinator Jack Mannings. Working with the Paramedic Science department at St George’s, University of London, they were asked to deliver training sessions to student paramedics, specifically about treating people with spinal cord injury:

“I did an Intro to SCI and a session on AD… only one person said that they had heard of AD and he did not understand it. They really sat up and took notice and were horrified at how serious and life-threatening AD could be and they might be faced with it in their work with up to then little or no knowledge of it.”
Mark

Despite there being over 105,000 people with spinal cord injury in the UK, we know all too well that not all healthcare professionals are given enough, up-to-date training to fully understand things like AD, management of pressure ulcers, and bladder and bowel care for people with SCI.

“At first the paramedics just thought that that they would only see a spinal cord injury when they turned up at a car crash etc and that AD is not an issue at this stage. They were shocked to learn that there are about 105,000 SCI people living in the UK at any one time. And with those numbers they are very likely to find themselves at a person’s  home for many reasons, such as heart attack, sepsis, fracture, chest infection – given that person is spinal cord injured they may also be having an AD episode at the time.”
Mark

Mark and Jack saw that a change needed to happen, had the right conversations with the right people and now the Joint Royal Colleges Ambulance Liaison Committee (JRCALC) guidelines officially include a section on AD, for all paramedics to refer to.

This is a huge step forward and – as always – we’re incredibly proud of our team for making real changes to the way things are done, to improve (and potentially save) the lives of people with spinal cord injury.

More information

Visit our knowledge hub for more details about AD.

If you know that you are at risk of AD carrying a copy of our Emergency Medical Card and working with one of our clinicians on an Emergency care plan will help to ensure that healthcare professionals are aware of the risks involved and can take appropriate action.

To obtain a copy of the emergency medical card just email our support line, [email protected]

Find out more about an emergency care plan here.