Multifaceted Analysis of Factors affecting Home Discharge of Patients with Cervical Spinal Cord Injury

Abstract

Objective : To examine the characteristics of rehabilitation in patients with cervical spinal cord injury, we statistically analyzed the factors that affected their home discharge. Methods : We examined 122 inpatients diagnosed with cervical spinal cord injury in our hospital from January 2001 to December 2010. We categorized the patients into a home discharge group and a non-home discharge group, and ruled out inpatients that underwent rehabilitation at other hospitals after discharge. We analyzed the following factors with regard to their influence on home discharge : sex, age, length of stay, surgery after injury, cervical vertebral fracture at injury, the grade on the Frankel grading system, Functional Independence Measure (FIM) scores, movement ability, pain severity, the number of comorbidities, complications, and the number of caregivers. Results : The factors that favored home discharge included : improvement of paralysis, improvement of FIM scores, high-FIM scores at both admission and discharge, and high potential for movement at discharge. The factors that hindered home discharge included : advanced patient age, long length of stay, pain severity, and urinary infection. Multivariate analyses showed that age, pain severity, and movement ability were the most relevant factors that influenced home discharge. Conclusion : Pain control as well as improvement of movement ability are important factors affecting home discharge in rehabilitation units.