1267 - Designing a Database for Patients Affected by Non Traumatic Spinal Cord Injury (NTSCI)

Objectives: This study was to design a non-traumatic Spinal Cord Injury (ntSCI) patient registry, collect pilot data to inform future development of the ntSCI national database, and assess differences between the ntSCI and traumatic SCI (tSCI) populations.

Design: This was a retrospective chart review study of 60 patients with ntSCI admitted for rehabilitation between December 2019 and April 2022. An additional 60 patients with tSCI enrolled in the local SCI Model Systems Database during the same study period were included in the analysis. Study patients were split into three grouped etiologies for comparison: traumatic, vertebral degenerative (VD), non-vertebral degenerative (NVD).

Results: Among 60 patients with ntSCI enrolled, VD was the most common etiology (58.3%), followed by inflammatory (13.3%), neoplastic-malignant (11.7%), neoplastic-benign (5.0%), infection (5.0%), vascular (3.3%), and others (3.3%). People of VD etiology were older (61.9y) than those of NVD (48.8y) and tSCI (40.4y, p< 0.001). Related to age differences, the majority of tSCI cases were single (64.4%) in comparison to VD (31.4%) and NVD (40.0%) groups (p=0.008). VD cases were heavier (BMI=37.4) than people of NVD (26.5) and tSCI (26.4, p< 0.001). Incomplete tetraplegia (48.2%) was the most frequent category in the tSCI group, while incomplete paraplegia was most common in the VD (67.9%) and NVD (82.4%) groups (p< 0.001). Average length of rehabilitation stay was longest in the tSCI group (27.6d), followed by NVD (23.3d) and VD (13.9d, p< 0.001).



Conclusions: VD patients were more likely to be older and have higher BMI, while traumatic patients were found to have more severe neurologic impairment versus other groups. Larger studies are needed to further confirm these study findings.