Citation

McPherson D, Simpson J. Proc. Am. Assoc. Automot. Med. Annu. Conf. 1977; 21: 280-288.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1977, Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Spinal cord injury (SCI) resulting in complete or partial quadriplegia or paraplegia is a disaster to the patient and his family and a social, medical and economic concern to the community. The community has responded in recent years by the provision of training in first-aid on the scene, improved transport methods and by the centralization of medical and rehabilitation facilities in Spinal Cord Injury Units. The result has been a dramatic improvement in the ability of these patients to cope with their disabilities, and expectation by the public that they will return to have useful roles in society.

Efforts to improve treatment as reflected in the literature far outweigh efforts to reduce the incidence of spinal cord injury by a study of its causes and mechanisms.

About one-half of spinal cord injury results from accidents in sport, at work, in falls or when objects fall on the patient as in the logging and mining industries. The remaining half are the result of motor vehicle accidents (MVA'S) of all types. It is in this latter group where research on mechanisms of spinal cord injury may decrease the incidence of this disease.

This study concerns factors related to motor vehicle accidents causing spinal cord injury in the fifty-four British Columbia residents who were injured while occupants of motor vehicles during a recent three year period and who have survived to receive hospital treatment.

For each case the accident record, hospital record, comments of witnesses and sometimes detailed engineering studies of the crashes were reviewed to determine the circumstances of the motor vehicle accident as well as any predisposing factors relating to the occupants themselves. The radiographs of the spinal injury during treatment as well as operative records were reviewed to try and determine the actual mechanism of the skeletal injury, i.e. flexion, extension or compression of the cervical or thoracolumbar spine.