Quality of life of women with spinal cord injury After completing rehabilitation from CRP.

Abstract

Purpose: To assess the quality of life of womenwith spinal cord injury in community after attending at a selective specialized rehabilitation centre (CRP).Objectives: To find out the quality of life of spinal cord injury women through the evaluation of physical functioning (PF), Role-emotional (RP), Bodily pain (BP), General health (GH), Vitality (VT), Social functioning (SF), Role-emotional (RE), Mental health (MH). Methodology: The study design was cross-sectional. Total 50 samples were selected conveniently for this study from community after their rehabilitation from CRP. Data was collected by using of questionnaire and quality of life (QOL) was assessed by the Short Form v236 (SF-36v2) health survey questionnaire. The study was conducted by using quantitative descriptive analysis through using SPSS software 20.0 version and association was found by Chi-square. Results: In this study, among fifty participants, 62% (n=31) were paraplegic and 38% (n=19) were tetraplegic with age ranging from 10- 70 years. Very poor Physical functioning was found in both paraplegic and tetraplegic women.The subjects reported lower scores on physical health and mental health in other dimensions of SF-36 where tetraplegic women scored less than paraplegic women. Significant association was found in all component of SF-36v2 for tetraplegic women but in case of paraplegic women only vitality and role physical did not exclude any association with SF-36v2 components. No association was found between residential area with SF-36v2 components but in case of rural area few significant association was found in role physical and general health.Conclusion: Spinal cord injury is a disastrous condition which causes individual’s quality of life declining. The spinal cord injured women reported low scores on all of the SF-36 dimensions that characterize poor quality of life (QOL) among all. The study demonstrated that spinal cord injury greatly affects quality of life and gives rise to more problems, especially in the areas of physical and mental health.It is necessary to take steps to improve the physical and emotional status of persons with spinal cord injury, as this will eventually lead to improvement in their quality of life. Key words: Quality of life (QOL), Women, Spinal Cord Injury (SCI)