Table 1.

Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria.

Study Component	Inclusion	Exclusion
Participants	Adults with traumatic acute spinal cord injury (complete or incomplete)	Pediatric patients <13 years old Pregnancy Penetrating injuries to spinal cord Cord compression due to tumor, hematoma or degenerative disease (eg, CSM) Patients without neurological deficit following trauma
Intervention	MPSS
Comparators	Placebo Standard care without pharmacologic intervention
Outcomes	Efficacy/effectiveness Change in motor scores Change in sensation (light touch, pinprick) Safety Complications, adverse events Death	Nonclinical outcomes
Study design	KQs 1, 2, 3: Comparative studies (RCTs and observational studies with concurrent controls) Follow-up rate of at least 50% n ≥ 10 per group Observational comparative studies must control for severity of spinal cord injury as evaluated by motor status at baseline and/or complete or incomplete injury KQ 3: Subgroup analyses from comparative studies	Animal studies Nonclinical studies Follow-up rate of at <50% n < 10 per group No control for injury severity
Publication	Studies published or translated into English in peer reviewed journals	Abstracts, editorials, letters Duplicate publications of the same study that do not report on different outcomes Single reports from multicenter trials White papers Narrative reviews Articles identified as preliminary reports when results are published in later versions

Abbreviations: CSM, cervical spondylotic myelopathy; MPSS, methylprednisolone sodium succinate; KQ, key question; RCT, randomized controlled trial.