Dear Spinal Cord Reader,

I am delighted to present to you the second ‘bumper’ issue of Spinal Cord. As I highlighted in December, extra pages have been allotted to both the December 2006 and January 2007 issues of Spinal Cord, in order to clear the backlog of articles waiting to be published in print and to decrease our print publication times. The first issue of 2007 is therefore packed full of extra articles.

This month's review is a discussion document from the International Spinal Research Trust (ISRT), which identifies key areas of basic and clinical research that are likely to be beneficial in developing potential treatments for spinal cord injury. It takes into account progress made over the past 6 years in research designed to repair the spinal cord and restore function following injury.

The ISRT review is followed by an original article by Guo and colleagues, which uses animal models to explore whether co-transplantation of neural stem cells and NT-3-gene modified Schwann cells could promote recovery after spinal cord injury.

Next, Donelly et al describe the use, accessibility and satisfaction of primary and preventive health care services to individuals with long-term spinal cord injuries, and compare results between the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. One of their interesting findings is that given the differences among countries, the health delivery model plays an important role in how and where individuals receive health services.

Other highlights of the issue include: several clinical manuscripts focusing on movement, exercise, gait, functional electrical stimulation and transfers; three studies that examine unstable baseline blood pressure in chronic tetraplegia, the supine postprandial hypotension in mid thoracic paraplegia, and the individual relationship between heart rate and oxygen uptake during exercise in tetraplegic patients; an original article on evoked potential monitoring during spine and spinal cord surgery; a letter on stents for the treatment of detrusor sphincter dyssynergia (DSD); and an interesting case report on cerebro-spinal decompression sickness.

I hope that you enjoy the articles in our January issue, and look forward to introducing you to many more interesting and challenging articles throughout the year.

We welcome your feedback as ever: spinalcord@uza.be