Spinal cord injury (SCI) is known to have a risk of developing secondary health problems which can be debilitating and increases the burden of care on patient and their caregiver. Our aim is to address the prevalence of health problems experience by people with SCI that living in the community and to investigate the relationship between secondary health problems with SCI characteristics.

This is a database analysis of International Spinal Cord Injury (InSCI) Survey, which was carried out in Malaysia from March 2017 to February 2018. Total of eight rehabilitation centres nationwide participated in this study. However as of this point of this study analysis was conducted, only data from four centres were included for analysis. Data were extracted and analysed based on 3 items: personal background (PB), lesion characteristics (LC) and health problems (HP). We conducted analysis on 7 out of 10 sub-items from PB, all sub-items from LC and 15 out of 16 sub-items from HP.

A total of 117 eligible participants were included in this study. More than half of the participants are from the age group of 25–44 years old (52%), most were single (47%). As for education, 73% of participants reported to at least completed Upper Secondary level. In relation to hierarchy of associated health problems, sexuality is the highest number of health concerns with 67% participants classified as high severity. This is followed by contractures and spasticity with percentage of 59 and 56% respectively. Except for prevalence of joint contractures, there is no difference in the prevalence of secondary health problems between participants with paraplegia and tetraplegia.

Sexuality, contractures and spasticity are the top three health problems reported in persons with SCI. The occurrence of health problems among persons with paraplegia and tetraplegia is similar.