Quality of life of patients with spinal cord injury in Italy: preliminary evaluation.

Quality of life is a complex concept, entailing the person's physical health and level of independence, as well as psychological well-being, social participation and the relationship with specific and relevant aspects of the environment. The World Health Organization encourages the integration of a comprehensive definition of health when examining patient-related outcomes after injury or disease. This study aims at evaluating the quality of life of 130 Italian patients with spinal cord injury, focusing on the associations among functional status and health dimensions elicited by SF-36 questionnaire. The subscale scores that revealed a stronger impact of the lesion were those related to the physical domains, especially for the physical functioning and physical role functioning. Physical functioning scores were significantly different in the acute phase with respect to chronic phase, in inpatients with respect to outpatients and in patients with lower functional impairment versus patients with higher functional impairment. Moreover, the functional impairment influenced significantly physical role, bodily pain and vitality scales. Disease phases also showed significantly different scores for general health. No differences were highlighted between tetraplegic and paraplegic patients.