Traumatic spinal cord injuries in Turkey: a nation-wide epidemiological study

l University, Van, TurkeyStudy design: An epidemiological study conducted all over the country.Objective: The present retrospective study was conducted to survey the new traumatic spinalcord injury (SCI) cases during 1992 in Turkey.Setting: Intensive care units, emergency services and departments of orthopaedic surgery,neurosurgery and rehabilitation of state hospitals, rehabilitation centers, military anduniversity hospitals.Methods: Postal questionnaires were used for data collection and the records from medicalinstitutes nation-wide were reviewed for the analysis of the epidemiological factors.Results: Five hundred and eighty-one new traumatic SCI cases were reported in 1992. Theannual incidence was found to be 12.7 per million population. Male to female ratio was 2.5:1and the average age at injury was 35.5+15.1 (35.4+14.8 for males and 35.9+16.0 forfemales). The most common cause of injury was motor vehicle accidents (48.8%) followed byfalls (36.5%), stab wounds (3.3%), gunshot injuries (1.9%) and injuries from diving (1.2%).One hundred and eighty-seven patients (32.18%) were tetraplegic and 394 patients (67.8%)were paraplegic. The most common level of injury was C5 among tetraplegics and T12 amongparaplegics. The most prevalent associated injury was head trauma followed by extremityfractures. Severe head trauma resulting in death may obscure the real incidence of SCI andmay cause underreporting of cases in epidemiological studies.Conclusion: Considering that motor vehicle accidents and falls were found to be the leadingcauses of traumatic SCI, it was concluded that the prevention measures should be focusedmainly on these in order to reduce the frequency of SCI in Turkey.Spinal Cord (2000) 38, 697–701Keywords: spinal cord injury; epidemiology; Turkey