Introduction

Quantifying diseases or clinical conditions in populations is a core domain in Epidemiology. In addition, measuring health status can facilitate the understanding of the impact of healthcare management strategies and health policies, even though measures of health status cannot always be interpreted as health care performance according to the Wildavsky’s proposition of “medical care equals health” (Wildavsky 1977).

Measuring disease frequency in populations requires stipulation of diagnostic criteria or case definition. For the purpose of this review, traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI) is defined as a lesion of traumatic nature within the spinal cord that results in the disruption of nerve fibre bundles that convey ascending sensory and descending motor information (Raineteau and Schwab 2001; Kraus et al. 1975).

Given the paucity of reviews on measures of frequency of traumatic SCI in populations, we sought to systematically review the literature with respect to the estimations of incidence, prevalence, and etiology of traumatic SCI in different countries worldwide and distinctive time periods. This review provides up to date knowledge of the global incidence and prevalence, and cause related data of traumatic SCI for clinical and policy comparisons.

The methods used for the development of this review expanded upon the traditional SCIRE methods (see SCIRE Methods). Specifically, we included only original articles that properly estimated incidence, prevalence, or causes of traumatic SCI among adults. Case reports, editorial articles and meeting abstracts were excluded.

Furlan JC, Krassioukov A, Miller WC, von Elm E (2010). Epidemiology of Traumatic SCI. In: Eng JJ, Teasell RW, Miller WC, Wolfe DL, Townson AF, Hsieh JTC, Connolly SJ, Mehta S, Sakakibara BM, editors. Spinal Cord Injury Rehabilitation Evidence. Volume 3.0. Vancouver: p. 1-15.