Violence, mostly from guns, has displaced falls as the second-leading cause for such injuries, right behind car accidents, according to national statistics. Nearly two decades ago, violence accounted for one in eight spinal-cord injuries. That has increased to about one in three.
Since 1973, violence has caused 3,280 spinal-cord injuries resulting in paralysis.
``This is a universal problem at all the metro hospitals,'' said Dr. Bruce Becker, vice president of medical affairs at the Rehabilitation Institute of Michigan in Detroit. ``It's a quite dramatic trend, and it's true everywhere: Philadelphia, Boston, Detroit, Los Angeles, Miami.''
Besides the damage to individual lives, there is the financial cost to society: About 85 percent of the victims are uninsured. Taxpayers end up paying their medical expenses.
``If you could prevent all the spinal-cord injuries related to violence for one year, then you would save $1.81 billion,'' said Michael DeVivo, codirector of the National Spinal Cord Statistical Center, a federally funded data center at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Doctors also believe some street thugs are purposely trying to paralyze people as a warning instead of killing them. It used to be that people would shoot horizontally, usually hitting the victim with one bullet. Now, doctors see more people being sprayed with bullets.
``They say it is trying to make sure they hit something important,'' said Lauro Halstead, director of spinal-cord injuries at the National Rehabilitation Hospital in Washington. Halstead had one patient hit with five bullets and another with 16.
Mimi Sutherland, the neurosurgical coordinator at the University of Miami's Jackson Memorial Hospital, added: ``It is a much bigger message to a gang to leave someone paralyzed in retaliation or revenge.''
