Citation

Finsterer J. World Neurosurg. X 2023; 19: e100197.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2023, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.wnsx.2023.100197

PMID

37359763

PMCID

PMC10288484

Abstract

With interest we read the article by Jazayeri et al on a review aiming at calculating the world-wide incidence of traumatic spinal cord injury (TSCI)1 Strategic searching, reference checking, grey literature searching, contacting of registries, authors, and organizations requesting unpublished data, browsing related websites, and hand searching key journals were applied to collect the intended data1 TSCI incidence of 49 countries was collected. The TSCI incidence ranged from 3.3 to 195.4 cases per million (cpm) based on subnational studies and from 5.1 to 150.48 cpm based on national studies. The review is excellent, but has limitations that are cause for concerns and should be discussed.

We disagree with the claim of the study that the worldwide incidence of TSCI has been calculated1 It is currently impossible to calculate the world's incidence of TSCI for several reasons. First, there are more than 200 countries in this world, and several of them do not cooperate with international health organisations, particularly the WHO, which collects, analyses, and publishes incidence data. Second, several countries do not have registries, which collect national data about the frequencies of disease in this particular country. Third, the definition of TSCI may not be the same world-wide, why different countries may produce different figures simply because they understand something different compared to other countries. Fourth, the authors searched the literature only until May 2020, which is why almost three years of published data have not been included. Fifth, there is no standard from of reporting data about TSCI as admitted by the author...

Language: en

Keywords

Trauma; Incidence; Global; Frequency; Spinal cord