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The trends in sports-related spinal cord injury in China

Spinal Cord volume 61, pages 218–223 (2023)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

Study design

Retrospective epidemiological study.

Objectives

To determine the characteristics of sports-related spinal cord injury (SCI) in China and assess changes in the trend of these injuries that may impact policy making.

Setting

China Rehabilitation Research Center (CRRC), Beijing.

Methods

Of the 2448 SCI cases reviewed, 6.7% (n = 164) were caused by sport- and recreation-related accidents. They were admitted to the CRRC between January 1, 2013 and December 31, 2019. We collected data on age, sex, etiology, the neurological level of injury, the American Spinal Injury Association (ASIA) Impairment Scale (AIS) scores on admission, and the neurological recovery results at discharge.

Results

Dancing (58.6%), followed by water sports (14.7%) and taekwondo (4.2%) were the leading etiologies. Of the SCIs caused by dancing, 27.1% of the individuals had incomplete injury, and of these, 57.7% showed improved neurological function. However, 72.9% had complete injury, and these individuals did not show any improvement in neurological function. Individuals with dance-related SCIs graded as A and D according to the AIS, showed no significant improvement in their motor function scores at the time of discharge. While the scores of those graded B and C increased significantly, there were no significant differences in the light touch and pin touch scores.

Conclusions

The etiology of sports-related SCI in China has changed dramatically, with dancing replacing water sports as the primary cause of SCIs. Individuals with dance-related SCIs have a poor prognosis. In China, prevention of dance-related SCIs has become a priority.

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Fig. 1: Standard posture of “Bridge” in dancing.

Data availability

The data sets generated during the current study are available from the corresponding author upon request.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the China Rehabilitation Research Center for allowing us access to data. We would also like to thank Professor Liang-Jie Du for his assistance and advice.

Funding

This work was supported by a grant from the National Key Research and Development Program (No. 2018YFF0301104), the Beijing Science and Technology Major Project (D161100002816004), the Capital Health Research and Development of Special Project (2018-1-6011), and the 2019 China Rehabilitation Research Center Scientific Research Project (2019zx-04).

Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Jun Li, Jun Liu.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Rehabilitation Medicine, Capital Medical University, Beijing, People’s Republic of China

    Jun Li, Jun Liu, Hong-Wei Liu, Song Wei & Jian-Jun Li

  2. Department of Spinal and Neural Function Reconstruction, China Rehabilitation Research Center, Beijing, People’s Republic of China

    Jun Li, Jun Liu, Hong-Wei Liu & Jian-Jun Li

  3. College of Rehabilitation Medicine, Shandong University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Jinan, Shandong, China

    Yun-Xiao Jia

  4. Center of Neural Injury and Repair, Beijing Institute of Brain Disorders, Beijing, People’s Republic of China

    Jian-Jun Li

  5. China Rehabilitation Science Institute, Beijing, People’s Republic of China

    Jian-Jun Li

Authors
  1. Jun Li
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  3. Hong-Wei Liu
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  4. Song Wei
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Contributions

J-JL: Planning the study and drafting of paper. J Li : Planning the study, interpretation of data, and drafting of paper. SW: Collecting data and drafting of paper. H-WL: Data analysis, interpretation of data, and drafting of paper. J Liu: Planning the study, interpretation of data, and drafting of paper. Y-XJ: Collecting data and drafting of paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jian-Jun Li.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Ethics approval

This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the China Rehabilitation Research Center (approval number CRRC-IEC-RF-SC-005-01). The requirement for individual informed consent was waived owing to the retrospective nature of the study.

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Li, J., Liu, J., Liu, HW. et al. The trends in sports-related spinal cord injury in China. Spinal Cord 61, 218–223 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41393-022-00872-0

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