People with Spinal Cord Injury in Poland.

EPIDEMIOLOGY OF SPINAL CORD INJURY IN POLAND In the past 20 years, no systematic effort has been made to estimate the national spinal cord injury (SCI) incidence or prevalence. Epidemiologic data are mainly derived from hospital-based studies and different time points and may be outdated. The incidence of SCI is estimated to be 14.5 for low urbanized regions and 20 per million population for highly industrialized areas in Poland. Currently, there are no studies investigating the prevalence of SCI in Poland. More data have been retrieved from studies pertaining the etiology of SCI. Over the past decades, traffic accidents (24.5%), falls from a horse cart (24.3%), and diving accidents (19.8%) have been the predominant causes for an SCI. Cervical SCI prevailed among those younger than 40 years (particularly among children and adolescents) with the injury usually resulted from a diving or traffic accident, whereas falls from height and lumbar injuries were more frequent in older persons.Males were affected 2.8 to 6 timesmore frequently compared with females. A systematic review revealed that there are no studies concerning the epidemiology of SCI that resulted from conditions other than trauma. Hospital mortality rate ranges between 8.9% (data from a specialized SCI center, 1965–1993) and 10.3% (regional hospitals, 2005–2008) in the acute phase of SCI and depends on injury location (18% of cervical, 7.5% of thoracic, and 2.4% of lumbar SCI), severity of neurological deficit on admission (17.9% in persons with a complete neural deficit), cause of injury (19%–21% among persons injured in falls from height, 16% in pedestrians struck by motor vehicles), and patient age. Deaths in the acute period after injury were most often due to pulmonary complications (74%), gastrointestinal bleeding (8%), urosepsis (7.4%), pulmonary embolism (6.2%), and irreversible brain injury (6%).