Increased risk of acute pancreatitis in persons with spinal cord injury: a population-based, propensity score-matched longitudinal follow-up study.

STUDY DESIGN

Retrospective cohort study.

OBJECTIVE

To evaluate the risk of acute pancreatitis (AP) in persons with spinal cord injury (SCI) based on a nationally representative sample.

SETTING

A retrospective cohort study using Taiwan's National Health Insurance Research Database.

METHODS

Drawing on Taiwan's Longitudinal Health Insurance Database 2005, the researchers created an SCI group consisting of 2280 persons with SCI aged 20-74 years. Propensity-score matching was then used to generate a non-SCI group of 9120 participants with similar baseline characteristics to the SCI group. These two groups' respective cumulative incidence of AP was compared, and the effect of SCI on AP risk was then assessed using stratified Cox proportional-hazards regression.

RESULTS

For the SCI and non-SCI groups, the respective incidence rates of AP were 1.34 per 1000 person-years (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.83-2.05) and 0.79 per 1000 person-years (95% CI, 0.61-1.01). Compared with the non-SCI group, the hazard ratio of AP for the SCI group was 1.96 (95% CI 1.19-3.25, p = 0.0088); and the SCI group's cumulative incidence of AP was significantly higher than that of the non-SCI group (p = 0.0227).

CONCLUSION

This population-based longitudinal follow-up study indicates that there is an increased long-term risk of AP in persons with SCI.