HealthDay News — While the overall rate of traumatic spinal cord injuries remain stable, the rate of injury among older Americans is increasing, according to research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Nitin Jain, MD, MSPH, an associate professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, Tenn., and colleagues collected data on 63,109 U.S. patients with acute traumatic spinal cord injury. The researchers found that the number of spinal cord injuries increased from 2,659 in 1993 to 3,393 in 2012. However, the rate of injuries — the number of cases per total U.S. population — remained stable. In 1993, the rate of spinal cord injuries was 53 cases per one million people. In 2012, it was 54 cases per million.
