Functional Independence Measure in Patients with Cervical Spine Injury

Cervical spine injury is one of the most common spinal cord injuries in trauma patients. From 100,000 spinal cord injury cases reported in the United States of America (2008), 2/3 involved cervical spine injury. American Spinal Cord Injury Association (ASIA) Impairment Score is used as an initial assessment but further prognostic outcome of these patients is often not paid enough attention. The objective of this study was to find the value of functional independence measure (FIM) cervical spine injury patients with conservative management and correlation with age, sex, type of trauma, onset of trauma, cervical bone abnormalities, type of spinal lesion and ASIA Impairment Score. A prospective cohort study was performed to all patients with cervical spine injury which fullfil the inclusion criteria treated in Neurosurgery Department of Dr. Hasan Sadikin Hospital Bandung. The subjects were classified based on age, sex, single/multiple trauma, acute/chronic, cervical bone abnormalities, complete/incomplete lesion, ASIA impairment score and initial complication. The patients were performed to FIM examination in Outpatient clinic of Neurosurgery. T-test and chi-square test with p<0.05 were done to analyze the data. There were 17 cervical spine injury patients treated in Neurosurgery Department of Dr. Hasan Sadikin Hospital Bandung during April 2009-April 2010. The average FIM value of cervical spine injury in those patients was 4 +/- 1.63 by cohort prospective study. There were no correlation between FIM value with age (p=0.064), sex (p=0.144), type of trauma (p=0.959), onset of trauma (p=0.220) and cervical bone abnormalities (p=0.869). We found a significant correlation between FIM value with type of cervical spine lesion (p=0.037) and ASIA Impairment Score (p<0.001) in cervical spine patients. In conclusion, type of cervical spine lesion and ASIA impairment score have significant correlation with FIM value of patients in 3 months after cervical injury.