Retrospective study of 72 patients treated for the acute lower cervical spinal injury with or without spinal cord injury.

We designed this study to evaluate the determining factors in the prognosis of the acute cervical spinal cord injury. We hypothesized as the prognosis is dependent on the severity of injury, not by time-related for the initiation of the treatment.

There is still controversies in the management of the acute cervical spinal cord injury. And the prognosis is generally considered to depend on the severity of trauma to the spinal cord.

We divided neurologic status into 4 groups; complete, incomplete, root injury and no neurologic deficit group. And there were complete cord injury in 12, incomplete cord injury in 34, single root injury in 14 and no neurologic deficit in 12 patients. The time to operation since injury was 24 hours in 7, 7 days in 32, 3 weeks in 15, 6 weeks in 8, and more than 6 weeks in 5 cases. The operation was indicated mainly for the patients with irreducible fracture-dislocation or for the patients with bony fragments, and disc materials impinging on the spinal cord. Surgical treatment were done in 67 cases with anterior cervical discectomy and fusion(ACDF), ACDF with anterior stabilizaiton, posterior wiring, and circumferential fusion. We statistically analyzed the relationship hetween the time to surgery after injury and the degree of neurologic recovery after surgical treatment by chi square test.

There were no neurologic recovery in complete cord injury. There were incomplete cord injury in 34 patients, 8 anterior cord syndrome had no neurologic recovery, among 24 patients with central cord syndrome(CCS) 18(22/24 operated) had neurologic recovery in various degrees and 2 of Brown-Sequard syndrome showed significant neurologic recovery. In nerve root injury, all except l (1/12) patient had complete neurologic recovery. There were neurologic recovery in 2/2 CCS when operated within 24 hours, 8/10 CCS when operated between 2-7 days and 4/5 CCS when operated between 2-3 weeks. There were neurologic recovery in 3/3 CCS when operated between 4-6 weeks and 1/2 CCS when operated more than 7 weeks after injury. There was no significant difference in the relationship between the time to surgery after injury and the degree of neurologic recovery after operation(X2=2.48, df=4, P=0.65).

Spinai cord injury is directly related with the magnitude of injury at the time of trauma, and the prognosis is determined entirely at the time of injury, And the prognosis is not altered hy time of the treatment.