Carry a card for emergencies to let people know you might have autonomic dysreflexia.Īutonomic dysreflexia can be a life-threatening condition.Take care not to get skin sores or ingrown toenails.Keep your bladder and bowels from becoming too full. Use the bathroom on a regular schedule.You can take steps to lower your chance of complications: If the problem is severe, they may watch your blood pressure for 2-48 hours. Your doctor may give you medication to make your blood pressure drop quickly. Quick steps can keep the problem from getting worse. Take off tight clothes or other irritants.This helps move more blood to your lower body and ease your blood pressure If you have autonomic dysreflexia symptoms, here are a few things you can do until you can get medical help: You may need imaging tests, like X-rays or an ultrasound, or lab tests on your blood or urine. They’ll check your bladder and bowels, since fullness or a blockage there is usually the cause of the problem. Your doctor will measure your blood pressure while they figure out what triggered your autonomic dysreflexia episode. Other things that can set off the condition include: Something as simple as a full bladder or an ingrown toenail can be enough to send your nerve responses into overdrive. The first signs of autonomic dysreflexia usually are a flushed feeling or a pounding headache. High blood pressure can give you a heart attack or a stroke. Your brain tries to lower your blood pressure, but its message can’t get past the damaged part of the spinal cord. That can make your body do the wrong thing.įor example, your blood vessels may react to the faulty signals and become narrower, which makes your blood pressure go up. But the nerves there still try to send signals back to the brain. You can lose feeling and muscle control below the damaged spot. You can get autonomic dysreflexia if you’ve injured your spinal cord around the bottom of the shoulder blades or above. More than half of people with a spinal cord injury in the upper back get it.Īutonomic dysreflexia is an emergency and needs immediate medical attention. This happens when your autonomic nervous system - which controls things like breathing and digestion that you do without thinking - overreacts to something below the damaged spinal cord. It makes your blood pressure dangerously high and, coupled with very low heartbeats, can lead to a stroke, seizure, or cardiac arrest. Autonomic dysreflexia is a serious medical problem that can happen if you’ve injured your spinal cord in your upper back.
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