Abstract
Spinal cord injury (SCI) is one of the greatest calamities that can occur in humans’ life. It brings about great challenges in the form of coping strategies as well as protocols of rehabilitation and characterized by a high incidence of poor self-rated health. This study investigated socio-demographic correlates of health-related quality of life (HRQoL) among paitents with SCI. Two separate self-rated questionnaires (the socioeconomic status questionnaire (SSQ) and generic SF-36 questionnaire) were administered to each of the participants to evaluate both socioeconomic statuses (SES) and HRQoL respectively. A total of 100 subjects with SCI of mechanical origin, aged 19-59 years participated in this study. Pearson product-moment coefficient of correlation was used to analyze the relationship between HRQoL and socio-demographic parameters (age, gender, marital status, clinical characteristic of morbidity and SES) and however, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to analyze the differences in HRQoL across categories of SES. This study indicated that SES and clinical characteristic of morbidity (CCM) were the only variables correlating significantly (p<0.05) with all the domains of HRQoL. In specific terms, the outcome suggested that low SES and complete SCI are associated with poor HRQoL components. However, age, gender, and marital status were all found to associate poorly and insignificantly with most of the HRQoL domains (p>0.05). The present study, therefore, submitted that in this population the most important determinants of HRQoL in SCI patients are SES and CCM. The implication of this finding is viewed in three different perspectives; first poor SES could precipitate the onset of the initial episode of SCI, second poor SES might lead to poor rehabilitation outcome and third long-standing SCI can precipitate low SES.
Highlights
Spinal cord injury (SCI) is an insult to the spinal cord resulting into reduction or loss of sensory, motor and/or autonomic dysfunctions below the level of injury due to trauma of neuronal elements of the spinal canal
Most SCI patients that participated in this study were between the age of 19-29 years (n=55, 55%), while the least were of the age of 50-59 years (n=7, 7%), most respondents were single (n=70, 70%) and majority of the participants have incomplete SCI (n=58, 58%)
SES and characteristic of morbidity (CCM) play an important role in determining healthrelated quality of life (HRQoL) in SCI patients (i.e. SES and CCM are predictors of HRQoL in patients with SCI)
Summary
Spinal cord injury (SCI) is an insult to the spinal cord resulting into reduction or loss of sensory, motor and/or autonomic dysfunctions below the level of injury due to trauma of neuronal elements of the spinal canal It may be complete or incomplete, which could cause complications and changes in respiratory, thermal, circulatory and neuromotor functions as well as spasticity and pain (Pereira & Araujo, 2006). SCI may cause quadriplegia or paraplegia depending on the level of the injury which could affect the functions of limbs, trunk, pelvic organs, bladder and bowel, as well as sexual function This loss of function could eventually cause great changes in life of the affected person making routine vocational, Received: March 27, 2019 - Accepted: May 23, 2019 - Published: June 30, 2019 To cite this article: Azeez AL, AI Hammed.
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