Basic Facts About Spinal Cord Injuries
Spinal cord injuries are often physically and emotionally challenging. A spinal cord injury can also have a profound affect on the friends and family of the survivor. As many as 11,000 Americans sustain a spinal cord injury each year with motor vehicle accidents, slips and falls and sports or recreation activities causing a majority of the injuries.
Step 1: Introduction
Hi. I'm Marcy from the Brain and Spinal Cord Injury Center at brainandspinalcord.org. Today I'll be bringing you some basic facts on spinal cord injury. Be sure to check our website for all relevant links and a recap of this article.
Step 2: General Spinal Cord Injury
The time following a spinal cord injury is both physically and emotionally difficult. As the patient and his or her family struggle to make sense of what has happened and think about what the future holds many questions.
It's helpful if both the survivor and his family have some general information about spinal cord injury. It's not uncommon for survivors of spinal cord injury to feel completely alone.
Step 3: Spinal Cord Statistics
But what many survivors don't realize is that approximately 11,000 Americans sustain a spinal cord injury each year and nearly 200,000 Americans live with a long term disability resulting from a spinal cord injury. About 52% of spinal cord injury survivors are considered paraplegic while 47% are considered quadriplegic.
What's the leading cause of spinal cord injury? Well, that varies by age. Motor vehicle accidents are the leading cause of spinal cord injury among people under the age of 65 while slips and falls cause the most spinal cord injuries among people over the age of 65. Eighteen per cent of all spinal cord injuries are the result of sports and recreational activities.
Step 4: Gender Issues
Statistically speaking, males are more likely than females to experience a spinal cord injury, while African Americans pose a higher risk for spinal cord injury than whites. And according to the Center for Disease Control more than half of the people who sustain spinal cord injuries are between the ages of 15 and 29. Since only 52% of spinal cord injury survivors are covered by private health insurance at the time of injury many questions are related to the cost of spinal cord injury.
Step 5: Spinal Injury Costs
A person with a spinal cord injury can expect to spend, on average, about 15 days in an acute care unit and about 44 days in a rehabilitation unit. The first year of expenses for paraplegics on average total $152,000 while first year expenses for quadriplegics total $417,000. A paraplegic who is injured at the age of 25 can expect to spend $428,000 on care throughout the course of his or her lifetime while a quadriplegic who is injured at the same age can expect to spend more than 1.35 million.
Step 6: Further Statistics
More than half of survivors of spinal cord injury are employed at the time of their injury. Statistics show that ten years post-injury 32.4% of paraplegics are employed while 24.2% of quadriplegics are employed. Of the majority of people with spinal cord injury, 88.1% are sent to a private, non-institutional residence, most commonly their own homes, following their discharge from rehabilitation.
Only 5.4% are sent to nursing homes and the remaining survivors are discharged to destinations such as hospitals and group living situations.
Step 7: Life Expectancy Rates
Life expectancy of survivors with spinal cord injury continues to increase but still falls somewhat below life expectancies of those without spinal cord injury. Mortality rates are highest during the first year following the injury, particularly among those with severe injury. Common secondary complications that cause death include renal failure, pneumonia, pulmonary emboli and septicemia.
Step 8: Conclusion
This concludes our segment on basic facts about spinal cord injury. Remember to check our website for the most up to date information including resources and tips regarding brain and spinal cord injuries.
