Prevalence of Individuals with Traumatic Spinal Cord Injury in Nairobi, Kenya

Abstract

Objectives: To determine the prevalence of individuals with a traumatic spinal cord injury in Nairobi, Kenya. Methods: Retrospective quantitative data was extracted from records of 1st January 2010 to December 2014, at the NSIH. (N=320) participants met the inclusion criteria of all TSCI patients injured archived medical files, out these (n=217) were men, and (n=103) women, collected data was analyzed by SPSS version 23.0. Pearson chi-square was applied to test for association between variables, Student t-test was used to compare mean difference between groups, study Significance level was at p-value <0.05. Results: Mean age of the participants was 37.59 (SD= 15.038), the highest percentage age was 30-39 years old at (27.8%) followed aged 18-29 years at (26.6%). Male to female ratio was 2.1:1, highest prevalence occurred in 2010 and 2014 (20.5%), main cause of a TSCI transportation (49.1%), fall at (33.4%), assault (17.5%) common injury location was at lumber (53.1%), followed thoracic at (27.5%) cervical and sacral at (19.1%) and (0.3%) respectively. There were significantly more persons with paraplegia (54.1%) who had complete injuries than those with tetraplegia (19.6%). Other (27.3%) accounted for the TSCI patients with incomplete paraplegia and tetraplegia and no neurological deficits Conclusions: TSCI is a devastating condition to individuals; it has a high impact on QOL and ADL in low-income countries where there is an increase in manual labor and poor infrastructure, which predispose individuals to TSCI. Further studies need to be done to understand and compare epidemiological results, to inform appropriate prevention strategies that will decrease the burden of TSCI globally. KEYWORDS: Traumatic Spinal Cord Injuries, Activities of Daily Living, Gun Short Wound, National Spinal Injury Hospital, American Spinal Injury Association impairment scale.