Epidemiology of non-traumatic spinal cord injury in Uganda: a single center, prospective study with MRI evaluation

Background A few reliable national data concerning the etiology of non-traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI) in sub-Sahara Africa exists, mainly because of the limitations of diagnostic imaging. These are both expensive and mostly unavailable in several resource-limited settings. Only a few studies have employed the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in documenting non-traumatic SCI and most of these studies are from South Africa. We sought to describe the clinical presentation, MRI radiological patterns, and one-year survival among subjects with non-traumatic SCI in Uganda.