Incidence of traumatic spinal cord lesions.

INJURY to the spinal cord is devastating and catastrophic. Its unfortunate sequelae have been recognized since early Egyptian times [l]. Since damage to the spinal cord almost always results in permanent loss of sensory and motor functions below the level of the injury, the best solution to the problem of spinal cord injuries is prevention. There are no published data on the incidence of traumatic spinal cord injuries. Unpublished reports from studies conducted in Hawaii for the years 19651970 [2] and in Arizona during 1973 [3] show an annual incidence rate of 25 and 35 per million population, respectively. A 1970 unpublished report by Sharman and Owen [4] for the National Paraplegia Foundation estimates an incidence rate of 12.4 per million population. In all of these unpublished reports, the term incidence refers only to those persons admitted to a hospital with a diagnosis of permanent paralysis. Persons with transient paralysis or paresis and those who died prior to hospitalization were excluded from analysis. For 1971, U.S. statistics estimate the prevalence of complete or partial paralysis due to injury at 145,00&170,000 persons, a rate of about 0.8 per 1,000 [5]. Descriptions of persons who sustained acute traumatic spinal cord injury-t were limited to statistical summaries from records of patients admitted to spinal cord centers or hospitals [6-101. We conducted an epidemiologic study of acute traumatic episodes of spinal cord injuries which occurred during a 2 yr period (1970 and 1971) in 18 northern California counties. The study was limited to acute traumatic episodes of spinal cord injuries because they represent 60-85 per cent of all persons hospitalized in spinal cord injury centers [l-2, 6-101 and because they share a common, preventable etiologic mechanism.