Health maintenance: paraplegic athletes and nonathletes.

The relationship between participation in competitive wheelchair sports and health maintenance in individuals having paraplegia was examined. Twenty-one wheelchair athletes and 21 nonathletes completed two self-report questionnaires. The t-test for Independent Groups, the Mann-Whitney U-Test, and the Test for Significance of Difference Between Two Proportions were used to test for group differences. A p value of 0.05 significance level was used. The subjects were similar in age, sex, race, education, age at onset of injury, duration of injury, and preinjury level of sports involvement. A large percentage of both groups had been hospitalized since rehabilitation discharge; however, the mean number of hospitalizations per year since discharge was almost three times greater for nonathletes. Fewer athletes had been hospitalized for pressure sores. Within the athlete group the more serious medical complications occurred before beginning wheelchair sports. Frequency counts of specific complications occurring during the past year showed that nonathletes had more serious conditions such as kidney infections and skin breakdowns due to pressure as opposed to those due to external trauma. The findings indicate that paraplegic athletes are more successful than nonathletes in avoiding the major medical complications for which they are at risk. It follows, then, that this athletically active subgroup of the paraplegic population is costing the individual, medical insurance companies, and the state less money for ongoing medical care and extensive repeat hospitalizations.