Long-term studies about orthostatic training after high spinal cord injury.

Results of long-term observations of paraplegics with upper lesions are presented. The circulatory behaviour of patients, completely bedridden for several months, was observed during orthostatic tilt-table exercise over a period of at least 7 weeks. It is not possible to achieve a decisive circulatory stabilisation in paraplegics with upper lesions. For the most part, there was no improvement in the process of adaptation to varying orthostatic intensity. Much more marked are fluctuations in the ability to adapt to orthostasis, whereby the maximum circulatory lability may not occur until several weeks after the start of therapeutic repositioning to sitting. In practice, these observations point to the need for a sufficiently long period of orthostatic observation of these patients' circulatory system.