Studying the prognosis of posttraumatic spinal cord injury patients with neurological impairments

Abstract

Traumatic spinal cord injuries have a high mortality rate despite the care provided all over the world. The probability of death of these patients is 3 times higher than those who are able to move, and it is the highest in the first two years after the accident. Prognosis and performance improvement of patients with spinal cord injuries depend more on the level and amount of spinal cord injury and the degree of disability than the cause of the injury. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between spinal cord injury and neurological outcome and neurological impairment.

Methods: The present study is a descriptive-analytical study that was conducted on all patients hospitalized due to spinal trauma in the last two years at Imam Reza Hospital in Tabriz. The inclusion criteria for the study included all patients referred with spinal trauma and the exclusion criteria also included vertebral fractures without spinal cord injury, the presence of non-traumatic spinal cord lesions, patients with neurological deficits due to peripheral nerve lesions, patients who left the hospital with personal consent, and incomplete information. It is a clinical case. Data collection will be done using the data collection form designed by the researcher.

Results: 99 patients were included in this study, who are 42.17 ± 16.15 years old. According to the findings of the present study, the most common causes of injuries were falls from a height and traffic accidents, which included a total of 91.9% of accidents. Out of 50 patients who had a traffic accident, 20 were drivers (20.2%) and 21 were passengers (21.2%), and the location of 9 was unknown. In the examination of patients' imaging, 94 patients (94.9%) had pathological findings in imaging, 59.6% of patients had plegia, 38.4% had paresis, and 2% had experienced hemiplegia. In the examination, the sensory level of the patients was located on the right and left side of the body, in the nerve path of C3 and C4 and in the thoracolumbar vertebrae in the roots of T11 and T2, but the movement level of the patients on the right and left side of the body was often in the nerve root of the vertebra. T11 and L1. 36.4% of patients had complete spinal cord injury and 63.6% of patients had incomplete spinal cord injury.