A new study published in Spine examines injuries and hospital outcomes for spinal fracture patients with ankylosing spondylitis.
The researchers examined patients with both spinal column fracture and ankylosing spondylitis admitted to the hospital from 2005 to 2011. The patients were logged in the National Inpatient Sample, with 939 patients included in the study. The average patients were 68.4 years old and 85 percent were male.
Here are five key notes:
1. The most common fracture was cervical fractures — 53 percent. Forty-one percent of the patients had thoracic fractures and 18.2 percent were lumbar fractures. Only 1.5 percent of the fractures were sacral fractures.
2. The spinal cord injury was present in 27.5 percent of cervical fractures and 16 percent of the thoracic fractures. There was spinal cord injury in 21.1 percent in the overall cases.
3. The fractures with more than one region of the spine occurred in 13.1 percent of the patients. The patients were treated with fusion in 49.9 percent of the cases.
4. In 29.4 percent of the patients there were in-hospital adverse events; 6.6 percent of the patients died during the admission.
5. There is a higher risk of adverse events in the patients with fractures in more than one region of the spine. "The results provide clinicians with a better understanding of the distribution and the higher morbidity and mortality of fractures in the ankylosed spine," the authors concluded.