The study found that almost 5.6 million people have some degree of paralysis, or 1 in 50 Americans, due to a variety of neurologic problems, stroke and spinal-cord injury being the leading causes. The new report counted 1.275 million Americans with paralysis resulting from spinal cord injuries — five times the previous estimate. Other conditions leading to paralysis are multiple sclerosis, brain injuries, birth defects, surgical complications and the list could go on.

 

Previous estimates put the number of paralysis cases at roughly 4 million.

 

“Nobody had any idea what the numbers were, because no one ever tried to find out. There were many different ways of counting it, and there was no common definition, and the numbers were all over the place,” Joseph Canose, vice president for quality of life at the Reeve Foundation’s Paralysis Resource Center, who led the study, said.

 

The findings were based on a telephone survey of about 33,000 households, which was developed by researchers at the University of New Mexico.

 

Dr. Edwin Trevathan, disabilities chief at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which helped design the study, said the findings are worrisome and “demand that we recommit… to help this population.” The report is “a crucial first step to providing appropriate public health supports for this community.”