Medicine and science in sports and exercise
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Med Sci Sports Exerc · Feb 2013
Autonomic function and exercise performance in elite athletes with cervical spinal cord injury.
"Complete" cervical spinal cord injury (SCI) is commonly believed to cause the decentralization of spinal sympathetic circuits and a consequent inability to meet the hemodynamic demands of exercise. Recently, however, we have noticed that athletes with motor complete cervical SCI exhibit an exercise-induced tachycardia that appears to be at odds with the known effects of sympathetic decentralization. ⋯ All participants exhibited partial preservation of descending sympathetic control. We also found that the degree of remaining SSR, but not IWRF classification, was strongly correlated with indices of exercise performance. The findings suggest that the degree of remaining sympathetic control is an important determinant of exercise performance in athletes with cervical SCI.