G- GENERAL STATISTICS AND LEGAL ASPECTS
631
authorities on river banks, lake sides and beaches to prevent children and, in particular,
young adults from diving into shallow water. There is, indeed, a great need for the
authorities concerned to ensure that the public are suitably warned of any danger of this
kind. Only by these combined efforts will the number of victims of traumatic tetraplegia
due to diving be diminished in future.
Mortality rate—survival rate
The death rate amongst the 3,000 patients is given in Table 40. It may be noted that
these statistics include every patient who died either during treatment in the Centre or
after discharge home or to other institutions. The uncorrected figures of 496 deaths
(16-9 per cent) include causes of death quite independent of those as a direct result of
paraplegia, such as tuberculosis of the lung, cancer, other diseases, cerebral haemorrhage
and new accidents. Taking out these causes of death the corrected figure of death directly
related to the spinal cord affliction is only 343 or 11 -4 per cent. Table 40 also gives a more
detailed mortalityrate of the traumatic patients. It shows a very low mortality rate—i.e. 9
per cent of the 1,210 civilians and 6-4 per cent of the 218 ex-servicemen of the Second
World War, many ofwhom had survived 18-20years, was only 22-4 per cent.
Table 41 reveals the length of survival of the 331 deceased traumatic and Table 42
shows the length of survival of the 1,632 living traumatic paraplegics and tetraplegics at
the time of the statistics in 1963. All these figures clearly demonstrate the dramatic change
which has taken place since the introduction of the new concept of management in the
prognosis of these men and women, who for thousands of years had no hope to live for
any length of time. But, of course, as already pointed out, the aim was not just to prolong
their life expectation but to make their lives worthwhile living as respected and contented
citizens, to live with their families and become once again their breadwinners. It can be
said today that this aim has been accomplished in a great number of paralysed people.
TABLE 43
DOMESTIC RESETTLEMENT OF 3OOO PATIENTS
LIVING AT HOME
2O59
LIVING IN PARAPLEGIC
SETTLEMENTS. HOSTELS
& HOMES FOR THE
DISABLED
24O
2299
PATIENTS UNDER TREATMENT
AT STOKE MANDEVILLE
151
PATIENTS UNDER TREATMENT
IN OTHER HOSPITALS
54
DEATHS
496
