Iranian Journal of War and Public Health

Background. Pain in patients with spinal cord injury ( SCI ) , is a well known entity with a wide range of prevalence from 16% to 96% , independent of the quality of the study. Surgical, medical and rehabilitative approaches, the availability of new pain relieving medications and the design of the study are the contributing factors in pain prevalence in SCI patients. This study was done to determine the prevalence of chronic pain and some of its contributing factors in traumatic SCI.

METHODS .This is a descriptive and cross sectional study on 80 patients with traumatic SCI from the 2003 earthquake in Bam, Iran, 5 years after the disaster.The data was collected by using questionnaire and interview with the patients. SPSS 11.5 soft ware was used for statistical analysis. Significant p-value was considered below 0.05.

Results: Of 80 patients participated in this study, pain was reported in 66 patients (82.5%) of whom, 38 (86.4%) were female and 28 (77.8%) were male. 45patients (56.2%) with complete paraplegia, 34 patients (42.5%) with incomplete paraplegia and one patient (1.2%) with quadriplegia were detected and pain was reported in 36 (80%) and 29 (85.5%) and one (100%) of these patients, respectively.

Discussion: Most of the patients (82.5%), with traumatic SCI in the Bam earthquake, were suffering from chronic pain, which was more reported among females and patients with thoracic injury level and incomplete paraplegia.