Bowel And Bladder Management

For persons living with a spinal cord injury (SCI) or spinal cord disease (SCD), problems associated with bowel and/or bladder functioning are common and have serious consequences for both health maintenance and participation, and ultimately for quality of life.

Marco's story differs from those of many other persons with a spinal cord disorder (SCD). While not unique, it is an unusual case.

The comprehensive assessment of Marco’s functioning took into account the perspective of Marco (patient perspective) as well as his rehabilitation team (health professional perspective). Marco's and the rehabilitation team's perspectives were quite similar. The assessment results were documented in the ICF Assessment Sheet.

Having a comprehensive overview of Marco's functioning based on the rehabilitation team's assessment and Marco's own statements about his situation helped them to identify mutual goals to reach during rehabilitation as well as specific targets to address with interventions.

For each intervention target determined during the assessment phase, appropriate interventions were identified. The intervention targets were also assigned to one or more of Marco's rehabilitation team members.

Over the course of the Rehab-Cycle^® Marco showed continuous improvements, reaching the majority of the goals he and his rehabilitation team had set out to achieve.

Having to deal with bowel and bladder problems is difficult for anybody. It is even worse if it becomes chronic. For persons living with a spinal cord injury (SCI) or spinal cord disease (SCD) bowel and bladder dysfunction often becomes the centre of their lives.

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