Abstract
Study design:
Cohort study.
Objectives:
To provide recent estimates of the incidence of traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI) in adults living in Ontario.
Setting:
Ontario, Canada.
Methods:
The study included all men and women aged 18 years and older living in Ontario. The two primary data sources used for this study were the census data provided by Statistics Canada and the hospital Discharge Abstract Database (DAD) provided by the Canadian Institute for Health Information. Incidence was estimated for the fiscal years 2003/04–2006/07, and examined by age, gender, mechanism and seasonality of injury, the level of injury, the presence of comorbidity and in-hospital mortality.
Results:
The incident cases had a mean age of 51.3 years (s.d. 20.1). The majority of the cases was male (74.1%) and had a cervical SCI caused by falls (49.5%). The age-adjusted incidence rate was stable over the 4-year study period, from 24.2 per million (95% CI: 21.2–27.6) in 2003 to 23.1 per million (95% CI: 20.2–26.3) in 2006.
Conclusion:
Despite worldwide trends that have indicated motor vehicle collisions (MVCs) as the leading cause of injury, falls emerged as the leading cause of traumatic SCI in this study. This finding, and the fact that the number of fall-induced injuries increased steadily with age, may indicate that there is growing concern for the consequences of falls in the elderly. Further work is needed to understand this trend in age and gender and the causes of falls to develop effective fall prevention strategies.
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Acknowledgements
This research was supported by a grant from the Ontario Neurotrauma Foundation (ONF). Dr Jaglal is the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute Chair at the University of Toronto in Health Services Research. Dr Couris postdoctoral fellowship was supported by the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute and the University of Toronto. We acknowledge the support of Toronto Rehabilitation Institute that receives funding under the Provincial Rehabilitation Research Program from the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care in Ontario. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the Ministry.
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Appendix A
Appendix A
Traumatic SCI ICD-10-CA codes (obtained from Rick Hansen Foundation), stratified by level of injury
Note: All these ICD10 diagnosis codes have been checked for evolution.
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Couris, C., Guilcher, S., Munce, S. et al. Characteristics of adults with incident traumatic spinal cord injury in Ontario, Canada. Spinal Cord 48, 39–44 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/sc.2009.77
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/sc.2009.77
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