RESUMEN
Cervical spinal injury by virtue of its fatal nature creates psycho-socio-economic impact on our society. Most related studies are clinical; none readily address the changing pattern of death due to cervical spinal injury cases. The autopsy data-based study merits special attention by representing the particular group of the cervical spinal injury cases who due to presence of some direct or indirect factor[s] succumbed to injury; hence identifies those particular risk factors related to death. We therefore tried to have the changing trend of death due to cervical spinal injury cases from a different perspective to identify the changing trend of death due to the cervical spinal cord injury over last the 11 years and to identify the risk factors in the modern era. All the 19742 autopsy reports from the year 2000-2010 in the Department Forensic and State Medicine of a suburban medical college in eastern India were searched for cases of death due to cervical spinal injury. All the available data were taken from the selected 536 cases and they were analyzed in SPSS [version 16.0] for assessing the changing pattern of injury and related factors during this period of time. The significant variables found were increased proportion of deaths aged between 15-30 years [p=0.003], increased number of female victims [p=0.000], increased cases in winter season [p=0.003], increased accidents in earlier hours of the day [p=0.003], increased number of cases admitted before death [p=0.000], increased proportion of injury on Friday and Saturday [p=0.021] There are significant changing trends in death due to cervical spinal injury cases. Until similar data from other sources are available these may be taken as avoidable changing trend factors to avert the risk of death due to cervical spinal injury worldwide