Changes in demographic and neurological characteristics in patients of a tertiary spinal cord injury centre with acquired traumatic or non-traumatic spinal cord injury/disease over a 25-year period. Implications for bladder management.

Authors

Ralf Böthig, Ines Kurze, Birgitt Kowald, Roland Thietje, Peter Wolna, Klaus Golka

Published in

Spinal cord series and cases. Volume 12. Issue 1. Aug 29, 2026. Epub Aug 29, 2026.

Abstract

Retrospective data analysis.
To investigate the changes in demographic and neurological characteristics in patients with acquired traumatic or non-traumatic spinal cord injury/disease (SCI/D) over a 25-year period and their implications for rehabilitation and bladder management.
Specialized tertiary German center for spinal cord injury.
We retrospectively evaluated the data of SCI/D patients admitted to initial rehabilitation between January 1995 and December 1999 (1st period, n = 461) and between January 2020 and December 2021 (2nd period, n = 441).
In the period from January 2020 to December 2021, SCI/D patients were significantly older at the onset of paralysis and more often female, paralyzed due to a non-traumatic cause or incompletely paralyzed than 25 years ago. The proportion of young adult patients (16-45-year-olds) fell from 61.4 to 23.1%, while the proportion of the over 61-year-olds rose from 14.2 to 49.3%. The proportion of non-traumatic SCI/D rose from 20.8 to 53.1%. The duration of primary rehabilitation decreased significantly from 158 to 85 days. The proportion of SCI/D patients with intermittent catheterisation on discharge from primary rehabilitation decreased from 62.7 to 27.2%, while the proportion of patients with indwelling catheter at the time of discharge from primary rehabilitation increased from 10.8 to 52.4%.
The proven demographic changes should lead to considerations about targeted objectives and quality criteria for initial rehabilitation after acquired SCI/D. Further research on this topic should include patient-reported outcome measures. Adequate bladder management of these often elderly patients with non-traumatic SCI/D remains a challenge.

PMID:
42668294
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 30 Aug 2026.

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