A spinal cord injury happens every 49 minutes. Approxiamately 2 million people live with a spinal cord injury and there are 11,000 new spinal cord injuries reported every year.

Spinal Cord Injury Costs
Spinal cord injuries are very costly. Initial hospitalization and rehabilitation costs are almost $250,000 for each person. Additional lifetime costs average $400,00 and can reach as high as $2.1 million, depending on the level of injury. A spinal cord injury is most commonly caused by vehicular accidents, violence, falls and sports.

A spinal cord injury results in sensory and/or motor impairment - affecting the spinal cord's ability to send and receive messages from the brain. These messages normally go to the systems that control motor, sensory, and automonmic (invountary) functions. A spinal cord injury can occur from trauma to the vertebral column, or from trauma to the spinal cord itself. In addition to movement and feeling, a spinal cord injury affects other bodily functions, such as breathing, bowel and bladder control.

Spinal Cord Injury Statistics
Which vertebrai of the spinal cord has been injured determines the level of injury. The closer the injury is th the brain, the greater the feeling and function loss will be. Paraplegia (53% of SCI) results in a loss of feeling and movement in the lower parts of the body. Quadriplegia, also known as tetraplegia (47% of SCI) is paralysis in both the upper and lower parts of the body (from the neck down). Since 1990, according to the Spinal Cord Injury Information Network, the largetst neurologic category is incomplete tetraplegia (29.5%). This is followed by complete paraplegia (27.3%), incomplete parplegia (21.3%) and complete tetraplegia (18.5%).

Only 52% of spinal cord injury individuals are covered by private health insurance at time of injury. The average hospital stay immediately after the injury is 15 days, at a price of $140,000. This is followed by an average of 44 days in a rehabilitation unit. Eight years after the injury, 63% of individuals who have suffered a spinal cord injury are unemployed.