Funcitional Independence of spinal cord injured patients

Abstract

To know the clinical presentation of spinal cord injured patients in terms of functional independence allows rehabilitation services to organize themselves in order to respond to the needs of these people in a most efficient way. On aiming to describe such standards of functioning, 150 medical charts of spinal cord injured patients discharged from two rehabilitation centers from 2000 to 2003 were reviewed for clinical, demographic and functional data. Male participation was 72% of the sample; mean age was (33.8 ± 14.2 years), being 21.3% of the cases due to non-traumatic injuries. Among traumatic injuries, 30.5% were cervical, 52.5% thoracic and 17.0% lumbar. Mean period between injury and the star of rehabilitation was 22.6 ± 46.7 months. At the begging of the rehabilitation, Stairs (11.9%) and Dressing lower body (24%) presented as the activities in which less patients were independent, while Feeding (68.4%) and Grooming (51.6%) showed more independence. The period from onset of injury was directly associated with motor FIM, confirming the clinical impression that spinal cord injured patients develop some degree of independence even without therapeutic support owing to the demands of daily life. Rehabilitation approach must be as early as possible in order to enable the acquisition of best performance, in the shortest time and the most appropriate way because the independence achieved without professional support may mean a compromise in security and higher energetic costs.