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Incidence of traumatic spinal cord injury worldwide: a systematic review

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Abstract

Purpose

Traumatic spinal cord injuries (TSCI) are among the most devastating conditions in developed and developing countries, which can be prevented. The situation of TSCI around the world is not well understood which complicates the preventive policy decision making in fight against TSCI. This study was aimed to gather the available information about incidence of TSCI around the world.

Methods

A systematic search strategy was designed and run in Medline and EMBASE, along with extensive grey literature search, personal communications, website searching, and reference checking of related papers.

Results

Overall, 133 resources including 101 papers, 17 trauma registries, 6 conference proceedings, 5 books, 2 theses and 2 personal communication data were retrieved. Data were found for 41 individual countries. The incidence of TSCI ranges from 3.6 to 195.4 patients per million around the world. Australia, Canada, US, and high-income European countries have various valuable reports of TSCI, while African and Asian countries lack the appropriate epidemiologic data on TSCI.

Conclusion

Data of epidemiologic information in TSCI are available for 41 countries of the world, which are mostly European and high-income countries. Researches and efforts should be made to gather information in developing and low-income countries to plan appropriate cost-effective preventive strategies in fight against TSCI.

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Acknowledgments

In addition to the list in Appendix of websites/organisations/people that helped us retrieving unpublished data, we would like to thank the authors of included papers in this publication as well as the following researchers: Dr. Walter Mauritz, who kindly shared his knowledge of TSCI data in Austria. Topsy Neher Smally, a Research Librarian at Santa Cruz, CA 95065 USA: She provided the full texts of two papers which were not accessible to us, and also she provided the extracted data of a Russian paper by contacting B. B. Lee (Spinal Medicine Department, Prince of Wales Hospital, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia).

Conflict of interest

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Sina Trauma and Surgery Research Center, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

    Seyed Behzad Jazayeri, Sara Beygi & Vafa Rahimi-Movaghar

  2. Students’ Scientific Research Center, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

    Seyed Behzad Jazayeri

  3. Institute of Mental Health Building, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK

    Farhad Shokraneh

  4. Department of Neurology, Haukeland University Hospital, Bergen, Norway

    Ellen Merete Hagen

  5. Department of Clinical Medicine, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway

    Ellen Merete Hagen

  6. Research Centre for Neural Repair, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

    Vafa Rahimi-Movaghar

Authors
  1. Seyed Behzad Jazayeri
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  2. Sara Beygi
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  3. Farhad Shokraneh
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  4. Ellen Merete Hagen
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  5. Vafa Rahimi-Movaghar
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Vafa Rahimi-Movaghar.

Appendix

Appendix

Lists are based on alphabetical order.

Contacts

  • Austria: Dr. Walter Mauritz,

  • Canada: Rick Hansen Institute available at http://www.rickhanseninstitute.org/ (The contact person of the site provided us with 6 related papers).

  • Cyprus: Cyprus Trauma Registry, contact person: Anna Pharmaka at a.farmaka@traumangh.com.

  • Denmark: Dr. Ellen Merete Hagen.

  • European Spinal Cord Injury Federation at http://www.escif.org/ (on the website, there were several links to affiliated institutes located in different countries across the EUROPE and we made inquiry to all the available addresses).

  • Eurotrauma: List of European Trauma Registries at http://www.eurotrauma.net/site2/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=46&Itemid=55.

  • Nordic Spinal Cord Council at http://www.nscic.se/nscic/Contacts.aspx.

  • The Netherlands: Dutch Trauma Registry, Contact Person: Leontien Sturms at l.sturms@lnaz.nl.

  • Nordic Spinal Cord Injury Registry:

  • Norway: Norwegian Spinal Cord Injury Registry at nhf@nhf.no.

  • Sweden: The Spinal Injury Registry of Sweden:

  • UK: EuroTARN (The Trauma Audit and Research Network) at http://eurotarn.man.ac.uk/. Contact Person: Antoinette Edwards, the Projects & Research Manager, at antoinette.edwards@tarn.ac.uk (he sent 2 related papers to us).

  • USA: National Spinal Cord Injury Association at http://www.spinalcord.org/ (Under resource centre tab and then at international resource section, there are registered names and contact addresses of organisations of 105 countries).

  • USA: National Spinal Cord Injury Statistical Center (NSCISC) at http://www.nscic.se/nscic/Contacts.aspx.

  • Vietnam: Vietnam Registry for Head and Spinal Cord Injury (Vietnam Head and Spinal Cord Injury Registry): Vietnam Veterans Spinal Cord Injury Registry:

Grey literature resources

Browsed websites

Browsed journals

  • Central Nervous System Trauma (ISSN 0737-5999).

  • European Spine Journal (ISSN 1432-0932).

  • Injury (ISSN 0020-1383).

  • Injury Research and Statistics Series (ISSN 1444-3791).

  • The Journal of Trauma (ISSN 0022-5282).

  • Neuroepidemiology (ISSN 0251-5350).

  • Neurotrauma (ISSN 0897-7151).

  • Scandinavian Journal of Trauma, Resuscitation and Emergency Medicine (ISSN 1757-7241).

  • Spinal Cord (ISSN 1362-4393).

  • The Spine Journal (ISSN 1529-9430).

  • Spine (ISSN 0362-2436).

  • The Journal of Spinal Cord Medicine (ISSN 1079-0268).

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Jazayeri, S.B., Beygi, S., Shokraneh, F. et al. Incidence of traumatic spinal cord injury worldwide: a systematic review. Eur Spine J 24, 905–918 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00586-014-3424-6

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