Local differences in the epidemiology of traumatic spinal injuries.

BACKGROUND Spinal cord injury (SCI) has a serious lifetime impact as well as obvious social and economic effects for both patients and society. The aim of this study was to collect recent information and analyze changes in the epidemiology of traumatic spinal injuries. METHODS Data included traumatic SCI (TSCI) patients admitted to the emergency department of Haydarpaşa Numune Training and Research Hospital between January 2007 and December 2011. 409 TSCI patients were included in the study. Categorical variables were analyzed with Fisher's exact test and parametric variables with independent samples t test. RESULTS The most common injury mechanism was high falls. 85 (20.8%) patients were injured in low falls, which was the second most common injury mechanism. The most common injury was lumbar spine injury (196 [48%] patients suffered isolated lumbar spine injury), followed by thoracal spine injuries. Lumbar spinal injuries (p=0.00011) were observed at a higher rate in high falls. Low fall was a significant mechanism for thoracal spine injuries (p=0.003). Automobile accidents had a significant relation with cervical (p=0.00001) and lumbar (p=0.004) spinal injuries. CONCLUSION Although cervical injuries were higher in automobile accidents, the ratio of automobile accident-related TSCI was less than reported in other studies. Cervical injury ratio of the population decreased due to the decrease in the number of automobile accident-related TSCIs.