Toxins (May 2020)

Health-Related Quality of Life Outcomes from Botulinum Toxin Treatment in Spasticity

  • Lorenzo Pietro Roncoroni,
  • Daniel Weiss,
  • Leonhard Hieber,
  • Justine Sturm,
  • Axel Börtlein,
  • Ingo Mayr,
  • Matthias Appy,
  • Benedicta Kühnler,
  • Joachim Buchthal,
  • Christian Dippon,
  • Guy Arnold,
  • Tobias Wächter

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/toxins12050292
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 12, no. 5
p. 292

Abstract

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Objective: The effects of botulinum toxin injections (BoNT) on health-related quality of life along the complex spectrum of spasticity needs further characterization to guide practitioners in a real-life therapeutic environment. Methods: In this study, we analyzed 50 consecutive and unselected patients with spasticity before and four weeks after re-injection of botulinum toxin. Health-related quality of life in terms of the EuroQol (EQ) as well as further motor and non-motor characteristics were assessed. Results: BoNT improved the EQ visual analog scale (EQ VAS). In addition, state of health and pain maxima improved. The EQ VAS improvement correlated with pre-injection characteristics of the EQ VAS and life satisfaction in the “movement disorders” domain. Conclusion: EQ VAS is sensitive for monitoring HR-QoL outcomes in an unselected real life observational cohort. This study may inform future studies intended to validate prediction variables that could inform on HR-QoL effects of BoNT treatment in spasticity.

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