Epidemiology of Spinal Cord Injury in Bangladesh: A Five Year Observation from a Rehabilitation Center

Abstract

Background: Spinal Cord injury, whether traumatic or non-traumatic, is a devastating and debilitating neurological condition and the incidence of spinal cord injury is increasing with time. It was aimed to look into the epidemiology of spinal cord injury in Bangladesh as a preliminary step towards the prevention of this condition and the related complications. Methods: Records of all admitted patients with spinal injuries from January 2011 to June 2016 were collected from the medical records of the Center for Rehabilitation of the Paralysed (CRP) hospital. Records were found of total 2184 respondents and data were analyzed by Statistical Package of Social Science (SPSS) 16 version and Microsoft Excel Software 2007 version. Results: Among 2184 respondents 86.8% (n=1897) were male; most of the patients were in their 3 rd decade which consisted 25.7%, 1513 (69.2%) of the respondent were from rural area. About 52% (n=1136) had the diagnosis of traumatic paraplegia and 42.6% (n=932) had traumatic tetraplegia. 992 of the participants (45.4%) had fall from height and Road traffic accident was the second common cause having the distribution of 567 patients (25.9%). Regarding the extent of injury, 59.8% (n=1292) participants had complete injury that is category A in ASIA scale. Conclusion: Despite being a single center based study, this extensive epidemiological data can direct as a base line and further large scale study would better to generalize the result.