Assessment of quality of life after complete spinal cord injury at T1-L5 level

Abstract

Objective: To find quality of life in patients with spinal cord injury (T1-L5 paraplegics) and to determine correlation between domains of life with time since spinal cord injury.  

Methods: The cross-sectional study was conducted from January to May 2023. 98 patients with 2 years post spinal cord injury aged (17-72 years) were recruited. Data was collected from neuro centers: outdoor patient department of Allama Iqbal memorial teaching hospital Sialkot, Lahore general hospital, Services Hospital Lahore and Jinnah Hospital Lahore. Health-related quality of life- BREF was used as an outcome-measuring tool. SPSS version 22 was used to analyzed the data. Descriptive statistics, one sample t-test and Spearsman correlation were used to interpret the results.        

Results: Mean age of participants was (38.52±14.0years). (N=37,37.8%) patients had T6-T12, (N=32,32.7%) L1-L5 and (N=29,29.6%) had T1-T6 spinal cord injury levels. Mean time since SCI was 32.37± S.D 4.89 months. One sample-t test showed physical health and social relationships had significant statistical difference (p-value 0.00) from cut off mean score 50 at significance level (p-value 0.05); CI 95% respectively. Spearsman correlation showed a significant relation between social relationship (p=0.00  0.01) and environment domains (p=0.02  0.05) with time since SCI among patients.    

Conclusion: Patients with complete SCI at T1-L5 (paraplegics) quality of life for ‘physical’ and ‘social domains’ was below average. Time since SCI was correlated with low quality of life among environment and social domains.