Original articleTrends in Life Expectancy After Spinal Cord Injury
Section snippets
Study Population
Data for the present study were collected through the Model Spinal Cord Injury Systems (MSCIS) program and submitted to the National Spinal Cord Injury Statistical Center (NSCISC). As many as 25 SCI centers located around the United States have contributed to this database at various times. Detailed descriptions of the history, eligibility criteria, data collection protocol, data quality control procedures, and current status of the NSCISC database have been published previously.20,21 This is
Results
The data were stratified into 3 time periods, as indicated in table 1: 1973 to 1979, 1980 to 1989, and 1990 to 2004. Table 1 shows how the subjects in each of the injury periods were distributed according to age, sex, injury level, and grade. It may be noted that the subjects in the late period were slightly more likely to be in the most severe group (C1-4), which may indicate a trend over time toward improved survival in this group until entry to the MSCIS. More strikingly, the percentage of
Discussion
The primary focus of this study was an investigation of improvements in survival in mortality after SCI since the 1970s. There were dramatic improvements for the first 2 postinjury years, which is consistent with previous reports. The principal findings, however, were that for the subsequent period there was at most a modest improvement since the 1970s and no evidence for any improvement after 1980.
Although these findings may appear to be inconsistent with previous research, this is not the
Conclusions
This study confirms the substantial progress that has occurred over the past 30 years in reducing the mortality rate during the first 2 years after SCI. As a result, life expectancy measured from the time of injury has also increased substantially. However, the study also shows that since 1980 there has been no substantial change in either annual mortality rates after the second postinjury year or in life expectancy as measured from the second anniversary of injury or later. However, the
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Supported in part by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research, Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, U.S. Department of Education (grant no. H133A011201).
No commercial party having a direct financial interest in the results of the research supporting this article has or will confer a benefit upon the author(s) or upon any organization with which the author(s) is/are associated.