Traumatic spinal cord injury in southern Saudi Arabia: Patterns, time to surgery and outcomes

INTRODUCTION: Spinal cord injury (SCI) is an unbearable neurological disorder. which has a destructive socioeconomic effect of affected individual, their families and the healthcare systems. Stressful spinal cord damages are caused by road traffic misfortunes, violence, sports or falls. METHODS: Retrospective study of 112 spinal cord injured patient admitted to Aseer Central hospital (ACH) between the years 2016 and 2018. RESULTS: The present study includes 112 cases of TSCI patients who admitted to Asser Central Hospital and surgically treated, with mean age 32.1 ± 14.12 years. Males were the mostly affected by almost 90.2%. Lower level of education is seen in 69.6% of patients; while only 30.3% of patients had university education or higher. Motor vehicle accidents (MVA) and falls are the only two causes of spinal cord injuries in this study; however, MVA was the cause of SCI in (79.5%) and 20.5% for falls. CONCLUSIONS: MVAs are the most source of spinal cord injuries in Southern Saudi Arabia with high male predominance. Despite the lack of significance between shorter time to surgery, and improvement in ASIA score, it was found that shorter time to surgery plays an important role in reducing the post-operative intensive care unit and ward stay, potentially reducing possible long stay related complications and eventually reducing health care cost.