Traumatic spinal cord injury in Saudi Arabia: a review of the literature

Abstract

Traumatic Spinal Cord Injury (TSCI) is a condition where the neural elements suffer acute trauma, resulting in short-term or permanent sensory and motor problems. An understanding the underlying structural and functional biological repairs of the TSCI mechanisms has intensely increased over the last two decades. However, compared with the other fields in medicine, the present degree of treatment and care for TSCI are quite unsatisfactory. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), the largest country in the Middle East, occupies nearly four-fifths of the Arabian Peninsula with a population of over 28 million. It also has the distinction of having one of the highest rates of spinal cord injuries in the world. However, research on TSCI has been very limited. Therefore, studies on the long-term incidence of TSCI in Saudi Arabia are vital and most essential to identify the high-risk groups, create awareness, establish trends, predict the needs, and thus contribute to effective health care planning of this condition. In this review, we discuss various aspects of TSCI in Saudi Arabia from the available literature.

Keywords: Saudi Arabia; Traumatic spinal cord injury; trauma.