Causes of Death After Traumatic Spinal Cord Injury-a 70-year British Study

Design: Retrospective and prospective observational.

Objective: Analyse causes of death after traumatic spinal cord injury (tSCI) in persons surviving the first year post injury, and establish any trend over time.

Setting: Two spinal centres in Great Britain.

Methods: The sample consisted of 5483 patients with tSCI admitted to Stoke Mandeville and Southport spinal centres who were injured between 1943 and 2010, survived first year post injury, had residual neurological deficit on discharge and were British residents. Mortality information, including causes of death, was collected up to 31 December 2014. Age-standardised cause-specific mortality rates were calculated for selected causes of death, and included trends over time and comparison with the general population.

Results: In total, 2322 persons (42.3% of the sample) died, with 2170 (93.5%) having a reliable cause of death established. The most frequent causes of death were respiratory (29.3% of all certified causes), circulatory, including cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases (26.7%), neoplasms (13.9%), urogenital (11.5%), digestive (5.3%) and external causes, including suicides (4.5%). Compared to the general population, age-standardised cause-specific mortality rates were higher for all causes, especially skin, urogenital and respiratory; rates showed improvement over time for suicides, circulatory and urogenital causes, no significant change for neoplasms, and increase for skin and respiratory causes.

Conclusions: Leading causes of death after tSCI in persons surviving the first year post injury were respiratory, circulatory, neoplasms and urogenital. Cause-specific mortality rates showed improvement over time for most causes, but were still higher than the general population rates, especially for skin, urinary and respiratory causes.