Survival after spinal cord injury in Finland.
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.2340/16501977-0812Keywords:
traumatic spinal cord injury mortality, cause of death, risk indicator, epidemiology.Abstract
OBJECTIVE: Mortality, cause of death and risk indicators for death among patients with traumatic spinal cord injury were investigated over a 30-year period. DESIGN: A cross-sectional study with retrospective data. SUBJECTS: All patients (n = 1647) aged 16 years and over who had sustained traumatic spinal cord injury during the period 1976-2005, who were admitted to Käpylä Rehabilitation Centre, Helsinki, Finland, participated in the study. METHODS: Demographic and clinical data were collected from the registers of Käpylä Rehabilitation Centre. Cause-specific mortality was assessed using Statistics Finland's official cause-of-death register. RESULTS: During the observation period (1976-2007) 419 patients died. The main causes of death were respiratory disease (28%), cardiovascular disease (21%), suicide (10%) and external causes (9.5%). The mean age at death was 55.5 years for men and 58.2 years for women. Ten-year survival was 97.9%. Mortality was significantly affected by age at onset of injury, neurological level and extent of lesion. Survival of traumatic spinal cord injury patients was approximately 50% that of the general population, and survival of the general population was 80% during the follow-up period. CONCLUSION: These results support the need for improvements in long-term rehabilitative care and regular follow-up of patients with traumatic spinal cord injury. The importance of psychosocial follow-up services must be emphasized.Downloads
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
All digitalized JRM contents is available freely online. The Foundation for Rehabilitation Medicine owns the copyright for all material published until volume 40 (2008), as from volume 41 (2009) authors retain copyright to their work and as from volume 49 (2017) the journal has been published Open Access, under CC-BY-NC licences (unless otherwise specified). The CC-BY-NC licenses allow third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for non-commercial purposes, provided proper attribution to the original work.
From 2024, articles are published under the CC-BY licence. This license permits sharing, adapting, and using the material for any purpose, including commercial use, with the condition of providing full attribution to the original publication.