{"doi":"10.3390/app15020886","title":"Intramedullary Stress and Strain Correlate with Neurological Dysfunction in Degenerative Cervical Myelopathy","abstract":"Degenerative cervical myelopathy (DCM) is characterized by progressive neurological dysfunction, yet the contribution of intramedullary stress and strain during neck motion remains unclear. This study used patient-specific finite element models (FEMs) of the cervical spine and spinal cord to examine the relationship between spinal cord biomechanics and neurological dysfunction. Twenty DCM patients (mean age 62.7 ± 11.6 years; thirteen females) underwent pre-surgical MRI-based modeling to quantify von Mises stress and maximum principal strains at the level of maximum spinal cord compression during simulated neck flexion and extension. Pre-surgical functional assessments included hand sensation, dexterity, and balance. During flexion, the mean intramedullary stress and strain at the level of maximum compression were 7.6 ± 3.7 kPa and 4.3 ± 2.0%, respectively. Increased intramedullary strain during flexion correlated with decreased right-hand sensation (r = −0.58, p = 0.014), impaired right-hand dexterity (r = −0.50, p = 0.048), and prolonged dexterity time (r = 0.52, p = 0.039). Similar correlations were observed with intramedullary stress. Patients with severe DCM exhibited significantly greater stress during flexion than those with mild/moderate disease (p = 0.03). These findings underscore the impact of dynamic spinal cord biomechanics on neurological dysfunction and support their potential utility in improving DCM diagnosis and management.","journal":"Applied Sciences","year":2025,"id":525175,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":3,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.909,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2025-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1399992,"name":"Karthik Banurekha Devaraj","orcid":"0000-0002-3990-677X","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1400382,"name":"Omkar Chauhan","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1116084,"name":"Balaji Harinathan","orcid":"0000-0001-9243-5746","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":583394,"name":"Narayan Yoganandan","orcid":"0000-0003-3376-4456","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":453279,"name":"Aditya Vedantam","orcid":"0000-0002-5212-0640","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":830302,"name":"Mahmudur Rahman","orcid":"0000-0003-3981-7619","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":46,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:50:21.274116Z","pmid":"39991023","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}