Survival in traumatic spinal cord injury

The present study was conducted on 1510 persons between 1 December 1973 and 31 December 1980. Of these, 1478 (97.9 per cent) were traced by questionnaire. Of those traced, 1252 were male and 226 were female. There were 194 deaths of whom 160 were male and 34 female. The main causes of death are cardiovascular, renal, respiratory, suicide and neoplastic. Compared with the 1973 study, there has been a marked decrease in deaths due to renal disease and a marked increase in deaths due to suicide and liver disease and the abuse of alcohol. A study of the new deaths allowed one to note a relative mortality rate to be 186 per cent for partial paraplegics, 209 per cent for partial tetraplegics; 318 per cent for complete paraplegics and 767 per cent for complete quadriplegics. The approximate application of these rates to current (1975-77) mortality tables permitted the calculation of theoretically derived life expectation at various ages. These indicated an improved life expectation for all categories.