Objective: To determine whether persons who incur a spinal cord injury as children are at increased risk of mortality compared with persons injured as adults given comparable current age, sex, and injury severity.
Methods: A total of 25,340 persons admitted to the National Spinal Cord Injury Statistical Center database or the National Shriners Spinal Cord Injury database who were not ventilator dependent and who survived more than 2 years after injury were included in this study. These persons contributed 274,020 person-years of data, with 3844 deaths, over the 1973-2004 study period. Data were analyzed using pooled repeated observations analysis of person-years. For each person-year the outcome variable was survival/mortality, and the explanatory variables included current age, sex, race, cause of injury, severity of injury, and age at injury (the focus of the current analysis).
Results: Other factors being equal, persons who were less than 16 years of age at time of injury had a 31% (95% CI = 3%-65%) increase in the annual odds of dying compared with persons injured at older ages (P= 0.013). This increased risk did not vary significantly by current age, sex, race, injury severity, or era of injury (P > 0.05).
Conclusion: Life expectancy for persons injured as children appears to be slightly lower than that of otherwise comparably injured persons who suffered their injuries as adults. Nonetheless, persons who are injured young can enjoy relatively long life expectancies, ranging from approximately 83% of normal life expectancy for persons with minimal deficit incomplete injuries to approximately 50% of normal in high-cervical-level injuries without ventilator dependence.