Abstract
This survey of traumatic spinal cord injuries was carried out by a statistical method in the National Murayama Hospital during 1970 to 1993. The number of the patients during these 25 years was 2030.
Of the 2030 cases, cervical cord injuries accounted for 861 (42.4%) and below cervical cord in-juries amounted to 1169 (57.6%). There were 1788 males (88.1%) and 242 femals (11.9%). The age at the time of injury was from 3 to 78 years. The age distribution showed a diphasic feature, with a main peak at 20's year in age and a additioanl peak in the age at 50's year. This diphasic fea-ture has been remarkable recently.
Comparison by the degree of neurological deficits at the time of injury revealed that complete injury accounted for 54.8% of cervical cord injuries and for 67.6% of below cervical cord injuries.
The most frequent cause of the injury was traffic accidents (34.3%) followed by falls on level ground. There was increased number of the patients with the injury by falls on level ground includ-ing the falls of a few stair steps in aged people of over 60 years.
From the results of this survey, the prevention of the injury should be focused mainly traffic accidents and falls accidents involving aged people.
