Early versus Delayed Surgery for Acute Traumatic Cervical/Thoracic Spinal Cord Injury in Beijing, China: The Results of a Prospective, Multicenter Nonrandomized Controlled Trial

OBJECTIVES: To compare the effects of early surgery (within 24 h) and delayed surgery on the outcomes of patients with acute cervical/thoracic spinal cord injury (SCI) in Beijing, China. METHODS: We conducted a clinical trial involving patients who were aged 16–85 years, had acute SCI from 1 June 2016 to 1 June 2019 in Beijing. The enrolled patients were divided into two groups according to the timing of surgical decompression. The primary outcome was the ordinal change in the American Spinal Injury Association Impairment Scale (AIS) grade. The secondary outcomes included the surgical time, volume of surgical bleeding, rate of admission to the intensive care unit (ICU), length of stay in the ICU, duration of mechanical ventilation, length of hospital stay, and postoperative complications. And the time consumption of different phases before operation was recorded for the patients transported to hospital by ambulance. RESULTS: A total of 148 patients were included in the study, including 55 in the early surgery group and 93 in the delayed surgery group. At 52 weeks post‐surgery, 27.3% of the patients in the early surgery group showed AIS improvement by at least two grades, compared to 8.7% of the patients in the delayed surgery group (P = 0.102). According to the logistic regression analysis, the odds of at least a two‐grade AIS improvement was six times higher among the patients who underwent early surgery than among those who underwent delayed surgery (OR = 6.66, 95%CI 1.14–38.84). The delay surgery group consumed significantly more time in the phases of transfer and inspection or examination than the early surgery group, and the Chinese regional trauma treatment system was widely used in the early surgery group. CONCLUSION: Decompression within 24 h after SCI can improve patients' recovery of neurological function without increasing the incidence of postoperative complications and surgical risks. The Chinese regional trauma treatment system can improve the diagnosis and treatment efficiency of patients with acute SCI and speed up the operation timing.