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.
Primary Language | English |
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Subjects | Studies on Education |
Journal Section | Original Research Articles |
Authors | |
Publication Date | June 30, 2019 |
Submission Date | March 27, 2019 |
Acceptance Date | June 23, 2019 |
Published in Issue | Year 2019 |