Quality of life in patients with spinal cord injury

The primary objective of this study was to assess the quality of life (QoL) in spinal cord injury (SCI) survivors. Secondary objectives were to determine the effects of various sociodemographic and clinical characteristics on QoL. This cross-sectional study included 54 patients with SCI. The Turkish version of the Short-Form-36 Health Survey was used to assess health-related QoL. Functional status was measured with Functional Independence Measure. Higher values were obtained in younger individuals for bodily pain, in paraplegic patients for physical functioning, role-physical, social functioning, and role-emotional. Moreover, it was observed that functional status correlated well with physical functioning, role-physical, social functioning, and role-emotional. Among the complications investigated, bladder incontinence is related to low health-related QoL in most domains. SCI may interfere with some health domains of QoL according to the patient's age, neurologic levels, functional status and presence of complications, mainly bladder incontinence. International Journal of Rehabilitation Research 33: 356-358 (C) 2010 Wolters Kluwer Health broken vertical bar Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.