Retrospective study of spinal cord injury patients admitted to spinal injury rehabilitation center, Sanga, Banepa, Nepal.

Spinal cord injury is a serious problem that affects many facets of an individual's life. This was a retrospective study which included data from all patients admitted to the Spinal Injury Rehabilitation Center (SIRC), Sanga with spinal injuries over a 4 year period between January 2008 and January 2011. The overall objective of the study was to determine the epidemiology of spinal injury patients admitted at the center. Socio-demographic details, mechanism of injury, level of injury, ASIA score and length of hospital stay of the subjects were recorded and analyzed. An incremental pattern was observed in the number of spinal injury patients attending SIRC. In the year 2008, 81 patients of spinal injury were recorded which increased to 122 in 2011. A total of 381 spinal injury patients were included in the study out of which a majority, 73.50% were male, 30.45% belonged to the 21-30 years age group and 23.10% belonged to the 31-40 years age group. A majority of Spinal injury patients, 189 (49.60%), were from the Central region followed by 89 (23.36%) from the Western region. Fall from height (68.24%) was the predominant cause of spinal injury followed by road traffic accident (18.63%). In the study, 213 subjects (55.91%) had ASIA A scoring and thoracic injury (49.34%) was most common followed by lumbar injury (29.66%), cervical injury (17.84%) and sacral injury (3.15%). About Two-fifths (40.42%) of the spinal injury patients were conservatively managed whereas three-fifths (59.58%) underwent surgery and length of stay of patients ranged from 2 to 305 days. This study shows that the young adults, predominantly males in their most productive years of life, are prone to traumatic spinal cord injury which results in personal and family tragedies along with socioeconomic burden to the nation. Thus, recognizing the pattern of traumatic spinal cord injuries, relevant etiological factors and identification of high-risk groups is necessary in designing better methods of prevention.