A Comprehensive Spinal Cord Injury Treatment Protocol Improves Outcomes and Decreases Complications

This study investigates whether using a complete treatment plan for spinal cord injury (SCI) can improve patient outcomes and lower problems after injury. The treatment strategy includes multiple expert team members. The study reviewed data from before and after the new SCI protocol was implemented to see if there were changes in hospital outcomes, complication rates, ICU and hospital length of stay, mortality rates, and costs. The researchers found that using the comprehensive SCI protocol led to fewer complications like pneumonia and decubitus ulcers, shorter hospital stays and reduced hospital costs for patients with quadriplegia.

• 1
  Implementation of a comprehensive SCI protocol significantly reduced pneumonia rates from 47% to 16% (P = .02).
• 2
  The study observed a significant decrease in decubitus ulcer rates, dropping from 47% to 11% (P = .005) after the protocol implementation.
• 3
  The introduction of the SCI protocol resulted in reduced ICU and hospital lengths of stay by 7 and 13 days, respectively, and a decrease in hospital costs by a mean of $42,000.