Epidemiology of Traumatic Spinal Injury in north of Iran: A prospective Study

Background and Aim: Acute injuries of the spine and spinal cord are causing the greatest amount of disability. They produce high cost outcomes for patients and society psychologically and economically. Knowing the epidemiology of these injuries play an important role in planning for prevention and conservative treatment. But now, we have little information about this in our country. The aim of this study was to determine epidemiology of spinal injury in Sari Imam Khomeini hospital, main trauma center of Mazandaran, an Iranian province. Methods & Materials/Patients: The present cross-sectional study was conducted on all cases of traumatic spine injury, who were admitted in Sari Imam Khomeini hospital, main trauma center of Mazandaran, during 2012-2014. Checklist included demographic characteristics (age, gender, location), mechanism of injury of the spine, the level of injury detected by radiologic imaging and MRI and CT scans, the scoring systems for assessing the severity of injury that were American Spinal Injury Association (ASIA) scale and The Injury Severity Score. Results: Among a total of 906 cases, 57.8% (n=523) were male and 42.2% ( (n=383) were female. Male/Female ratio was 1.37:1. The most common age group at which spinal injury occurred in males was 25-44 years-old, and in females was 45-64 years-old (P=0.044). The most frequent causative mechanism of trauma was traffic accidents (especially motorcycle-caused accidents). The most common injury in spine fracture was compression and burst types. Among 93 patients with abnormal findings on neurological examination, 45 of them had complete spinal cord injury (class A of ASIA) and 48 of them had incomplete spinal cord injury (class B, C, D of ASIA). Conclusions: Motor vehicles accidents are the most common cause of spine and spinal cord injury in Mazandaran,a region of the North of Iran. The incidence of spinal cord injury is high if ISS is more than 12.