Are the characteristics of the patient with a spinal cord injury changing?

A retrospective analytical study.

To determine the epidemiologic pattern of spinal cord injury (SCI) over the last decade.

Patients admitted in the spinal cord injury unit at a university hospital between 1 January 2001 and 31 December 2013.

A review of the clinical history of the patients was conducted. Patients were allocated according to traumatic (traffic and non-traffic accidents) or non-traumatic origin (tumour and non-tumour disease). Information about gender, age, admission and discharge date and cause, level and grade of spinal cord injury was collected. An analysis using the time-trend series was performed.

The average length of stay decreases 1.5 days quarterly, and the average patient's age increases 0.25 year quarterly. No trend was observed with respect to the number of cases.

Although the number of patients with an SCI caused by an accident has decreased and the average age of patients with an SCI has increased, it cannot be said that there has been a paradigm shift in patients with SCI.