• During the six year period from 1 July 1999 to 30 June 2005 19,912 hospital separations in Australia involved spinal cord injury.
  • Incident rates for males were generally significantly higher than for females across all age groups.
  • Almost half of all incident cases sustained an injury to the cervical spinal cord.
  • Rates for incident cases remained relatively steady over the reported period.
  • Transport-related accidents accounted for over 47% of all incident cases, while fall-related accidents accounted for a further 33%.
  • Over 62% of identified rehabilitation episodes of care for patients with SCI involved treatment in a hospital with a spinal unit. This proportion is lower than anticipated, which might be due to data limitations.
  • Nearly three-quarters of rehabilitation episodes of care involved an allied health intervention as the principal procedure, most commonly physiotherapy.
  • 54% (n = 10,826) of the separations involving SCI were readmissions related to complications of spinal cord injuries sustained at an earlier time.
  • Common forms of complication of SCI included urinary tract infections, pressure ulcers and other bacterial infections.
  • The introduction of person-based record linkage would allow much more complete and reliable estimation of the incidence of SCI in the community and of the burden of SCI on the hospital sector and community.
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