Background:

Traumatic spinal cord injury is a supervening and often devastating event due to functional loss, secondary complications and lack of curative treatment. It is posed as a personal, health and social challenge.

Objective:

The objective of the study is to describe the epidemiological, clinical and support characteristics of people with traumatic spinal cord injury in the Principality of Asturias.

Materials and method:

Observational, descriptive and cross-sectional study. The population comprised people with traumatic spinal cord injury admitted for any reason at the Central University Hospital of Asturias from January 1, 2005 to January 31, 2015.

Results:

The number of cases was 92. 76.9% were men. The average age was 48.5 years old and the average age when the injury occurred was 40.2 years old. The most frequent causes were accidents: traffic, labor and fortuitous. The most frequent type of injury: according to limb involvement, paraplegia with 38.5%; according to the extension, the incomplete lesion with 52.6%; according to the neurological level, the dorsal lesion with 45.4% and according to the classification scale of the American Spinal Injury Association (ASIA), the ASIA A lesion with 50.7%. As most frequent secondary complications: 68.7% have neurogenic bladder, 60.2% neurogenic bowel, 46.5% pressure ulcers, 46.4% spasticity and 30.1% neuropathic pain.

Conclusions:

There is a high prevalence of secondary complications in spinal cord injury, being necessary to join efforts in the prevention and treatment of them.

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