Health Condition and Quality of Life in Persons with Spinal Cord Injury.

Abstract

During the last few decades, focus of rehabilitation outcome has been redirected to the lifetime monitoring of quality of life. The purpose of this study was to investigate the differences in quality of life perceptions between participants with spinal cord injury and participants of typical population.This cross-sectional controlled study of 100 adults aged 18-65 years was based on two questionnaires, Short Form-36 Health Survey (SF-36) and Spinal Cord Injury Quality of Life Questionnaire (QL-23), completed by 23 participants with paraplegia, 21 participants with tetraplegia, and 56 participants of typical population. Mann-Whitney U-test for planned comparison between groups and χ(2) test were used to analyze the differences between research groups.Participants from control group perceived their general quality of life at higher level in comparison to participants with spinal cord injury (U=415.000, z=-5.804, P

Keywords

• Health status
• Paraplegia
• Quality of life
• Spinal cord injuries
• Tetraplegia