How does knowledge about spinal cord injury-related complications develop in subjects with spinal cord injury? A descriptive analysis in 214 patients.

STUDY DESIGN

Monocentric cohort study.

OBJECTIVE

To investigate the acquisition of knowledge about spinal cord injury (SCI)-related complications in SCI patients.

SETTING

Level 1 trauma center.

METHODS

All patients with a traumatic or non-traumatic SCI were included in the study. Data were collected at admission, post-admission at 1 and 3 months and post-discharge at 6, 18 and 30 months. The discharge of all patients was between 3 and 6 months post-admission. Knowledge about pressure ulcers and bladder management was tested using the 'Knowledge' score. This score has a minimum and maximum of 0 and 20 points. To detect differences across the multiple time intervals, the Friedman test was used. Differences in the number of patients with poor (0-8), average (9-12) and good knowledge (13-20) between the different age classifications (age at injury) were calculated using a χ (2)-test.

RESULTS

A total of 214 patients were included. At discharge subjects had increased their knowledge score to 11.2 compared with 5.4 on admission (P < 0.001). After 30 months, however, the mean score decreased to 10.8 points. At the time of discharge, the number of patients who achieved poor, average or good knowledge were 48 (22.4%), 65 (30.4%) and 101 (47.2%), respectively. Subjects of ∼50 years old and tetraplegics had better (P < 0.001) knowledge compared with subjects of ∼50 years old and paraplegics, respectively.

CONCLUSION

In this study, less than 50% of SCI patients had good knowledge about bladder management and pressure ulcers after being discharged.