History of the NSIC
The original National Spinal Injuries Centre was set up by Sir Ludwig Guttmann in the old wooden part of Stoke Mandeville Hospital, Buckinghamshire in 1944 to treat servicemen who had sustained spinal cord injuries in the Second World War. Before this time, most such patients died of complications within one year of injury. The experience gained in treating and preventing complications, together with an increase in injuries caused by road traffic accidents, led to a rapid expansion of the Centre from an initial 26 beds to 190 beds in the main part of the hospital.
Severe weather conditions in Buckinghamshire in 1980 caused the ceiling in five of the spinal wards in the wooden huts to collapse which resulted in rapid flooding and falling debris. It was suggested that the Centre would have to close as the Area Health Authority did not have any funds to pay for all the work required to bring the wards back into use. The implications of this would have been disastrous as patients would have had to be treated in local District Hospitals where the expertise and knowledge of the treatment and rehabilitation of paraplegia and tetraplegia were not available.
It was at this point that Sir Jimmy Savile, then working as a volunteer porter at the hospital, set about organising the campaign to raise the necessary funds for a purpose built replacement spinal cord injuries centre. The appeal was launched in January 1980 with an initial donation of £150,000. The public responded in a way never seen before and, within three years, over ten million pounds had been raised to build and equip the new National Spinal Injuries Centre, which was officially opened in 1983. Sir James continues to take an active interest in the spinal Centre.
The Centre is free standing but linked to the main hospital. The work of the NSIC consists of diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation of patients, both with acute spinal cord injuries and with non-traumatic spinal cord lesions of acute onset. Patients are referred from all over the UK , and from many countries around the world. The concept of very early admission to a spinal cord injuries centre was pioneered at the NSIC and this, along with many methods of treatment, have been adopted by spinal cord injuries centres around the world.
The policy of the NSIC is to provide a life-long follow-up service based on our large Outpatients Department. Ex-patients who develop complications or require hospital admission are readmitted to the Centre whenever possible to avoid complications which are more likely to occur outside a specialised unit. Alongside the full range of appropriate treatments offered to patients, the Centre also provides ongoing care and assessment of children with spinal cord injury, a posture and seating clinic, gait analysis, driving assessment and a computer workshop.
The NSIC aims to be a national and international centre of excellence for high quality diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation of patients with spinal cord lesions or injury. Its aims to provide a life long service including the treatment of ex patients who develop complications or who require hospital admission for medical problems not connected to their injury.
The NSIC strives to be at the forefront of clinical educational and research development in all matters relating to spinal cord injury incorporating links with universities and other Spinal Centres both nationally and internationally.
