Evangelista Santos Barcelos Alécio Cristino, Scardino Fabrizio Borges, Patriota Gustavo Cartaxo, Rotta José Marcus, Botelho Ricardo Vieira
Department of Neurosurgery, Spine Surgery Section, Hospital do Servidor Público Estadual de São Paulo, Indianópolis, São Paulo, Brazil.
Acta Neurochir (Wien). 2009 Apr;151(4):369-72. doi: 10.1007/s00701-009-0238-0. Epub 2009 Mar 10.
The neurological examination terminologies and definitions of the status of spinal cord injured (SCI) patients are of great importance to establish scales and provide standard nomenclatures. There is a disagreement between the classical neurological terminology and the definitions of complete and incomplete paraplegia that have been proposed in traumatic spinal cord injured patients.
To discuss the adequacy and the impact of the terms incomplete paraplegia and paraparesis in current literature.
A review of the origin of the terms, definitions and nomenclatures applied by the most widespread assessment scales in traumatic SCI published in peer review papers was performed, searching the scales cited on the references of the latest American Spinal Injury Association classification (2002; available in http://www.asia-spinalinjury.org/ ) up to the first classification, described by Frankel et al. [14].
The term "incomplete paraplegia" has been used to define clinical situations classically described as "paraparesis".
The terms "complete" and "incomplete" are adequately used to characterize the completeness of spinal cord lesion but inadequately used when associated to the term "plegia" as a qualifier. Therefore, patients with any preservation of motor strength below the injury level should be described as paraparetic and not as incomplete paraplegic.
脊髓损伤（SCI）患者的神经学检查术语及脊髓损伤状态的定义对于建立量表和提供标准命名至关重要。经典神经学术语与创伤性脊髓损伤患者中提出的完全性和不完全性截瘫的定义之间存在分歧。
探讨当前文献中不完全性截瘫和轻截瘫这两个术语的适用性及其影响。
对同行评议论文中发表的创伤性脊髓损伤最广泛使用的评估量表所应用的术语、定义和命名的起源进行综述，检索截至由弗兰克尔等人[14]描述的首次分类（即最新美国脊髓损伤协会分类（2002年；可在http://www.asia-spinalinjury.org/获取）参考文献中引用的量表）。
“不完全性截瘫”一词已被用于定义传统上描述为“轻截瘫”的临床情况。
“完全性”和“不完全性”这两个术语足以用于描述脊髓损伤的完整性，但与“截瘫”一词关联用作限定词时使用不当。因此，损伤平面以下有任何运动力量保留的患者应描述为轻截瘫，而非不完全性截瘫。
