Türkiye’de Doğu Anadolu bölgesinde spinal travmaların tanımlayıcı özellikleri: 3 yıllık retrospektif analiz.

Purpose: Understanding the descriptive characteristics of traumatic spinal injuries such as etiology, epidemiology, mortality and their associations with mortality may facilitate the diagnosis and management of spinal traumas. Moreover, its incidence can be reduced through eliminating preventable causes. The present study aimed to assess the descriptive characteristics of spinal traumas and the conditions associated with mortality in our country. Materials and methods: Our study was conducted retrospectively in the emergency service of a tertiary care hospital. Data of patients visiting to our hospital’s emergency room between 2020 and 2023 with spinal trauma, were obtained from the hospital information management system by scanning electronic patient records for inclusion in the study. Results: A total of 1835 patients were included in our study, of which 427 (23.3%) were female and 1408 (76.7%) were male. The most common complaint of the included patients who presented to the emergency room was observed as falls (n꞊1112). 52.8% (n=968) of those patients with special traumas had other concomitant injury. 3.7% (n=68) of the included patients resulted in death. Conclusion: Falls are the most common cause of special traumas in our country and concomitant head trauma and thoracic trauma are closely associated with mortality. While men are more frequently presented to the emergency room with special trauma, there has been no difference between both sexes in terms of mortality rate. Moreover, the most common vertebral fractures after spinal trauma occur in the parts of the corpus and spinous processes of the lumbar vertebrae.