Gupta: People with Shelton's injury 'almost always get better'

CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta

(CNN) -- Gen. Henry "Hugh" Shelton, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, suffered some paralysis after falling from a ladder at his Virginia home on Saturday. CNN Medical Correspondent Sanjay Gupta spoke with CNN's Bill Hemmer on Tuesday about the prognosis in injuries like Shelton's.

GUPTA: I spoke to the doctors both at Fairfax hospital, in ... suburban Virginia, where he was initially taken, as well as the doctors at Walter Reed [Army Medical Center]. He was taken there, Bill, as you know, because of protocol.

They think that he had a spinal cord injury, but luckily, probably an incomplete spinal cord injury. Specifically, we're talking about something called central cord syndrome. The name is not that important, but basically what it means is that areas of the spinal cord got swollen, after a significant impact from the -- probably from the fall, obviously.

The good news: Those almost always get better. Just how much better, difficult to say. But probably will have significant improvements over the next few days to weeks.

CNN: So what you're suggesting, as the swelling goes down, they'll be able to get a clearer picture about what's happening with him, physically.

GUPTA: That's right. A lot of the ways they sort of approach this is based on how he's doing. It certainly is good news that even after just three days that you start to have some significant improvement in the movement. He has had some improvement already, in terms of moving his feet, his hands.

A lot of times, in the long run you may have some hand weakness that's sort of left over after these injuries. But the good news is walking and all the activities of daily living will probably improve tremendously.

CNN: We will certainly keep our fingers crossed for him and his health. Is there a negative side to an injury like this? Perhaps not with Hugh Shelton, but with others who have suffered from it?

GUPTA: Well, certainly, any time you damage a spinal cord like that you do worry that you could have some longstanding consequences. And if it is in the neck, we're talking about the arms, the legs, perhaps even breathing. You really try and figure out early, do everything medically you can, to try and decrease the swelling around that spinal cord.

If you can't, sometimes obviously that can lead to some of the situations we've heard so much about: paralysis, quadriplegia, things like that. That is not what we're probably talking about here, thankfully.