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Review
. 2024 Mar 21;13(6):1820.
doi: 10.3390/jcm13061820.

The Quality of Life in Patients with Spinal Cord Injury: Assessment and Rehabilitation

Davide Cardile  1 , Andrea Calderone  1 , Rosaria De Luca  1 , Francesco Corallo  1 , Angelo Quartarone  1 , Rocco Salvatore Calabrò  1
Affiliations
Review

The Quality of Life in Patients with Spinal Cord Injury: Assessment and Rehabilitation

Davide Cardile et al. J Clin Med. .

Abstract

Background and Objectives: Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) develops when the spinal cord is damaged and leads to partial or complete loss of motor and/or sensory function, usually below the level of injury. Medical advances in the last few decades have enabled SCI patients to survive after their initial injury and extend their life expectancy. As a result, the need for outcome measures to assess health and Quality of Life (QoL) after rehabilitation is increasing. All QoL assessment measures include implicit or explicit reactions and evaluations of a person's life characteristics. This review aims to investigate QoL and its assessment in patients with SCI and how the instruments that are used may influence rehabilitation. Materials and Methods: Studies were identified from an online search of PubMed, Cochrane Library, and Scopus databases. Studies published between 2013 and 2023 were selected. This review has been registered on OSF (n) 892NY. Results: We found that different psychological and physical aspects can positively or negatively influence the QoL of SCI patients, and the measurement of this aspect, despite the number of tools, is limited due to the lack of a universal definition of this theme and the greater prevalence of quantitative rather than qualitative tools. Conclusions: This review has demonstrated that clinicians and psychologists involved in SCI rehabilitation should consider tools that use high-quality standardized outcome measures to detect and compare potential differences and outcomes of interventions related to HRQoL and their relationship with the personality and functional status of the patient.

Keywords: assessment; neurorehabilitation; quality of life; spinal cord injury.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflicts of interest to disclose.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
PRISMA flow diagram of the current review.
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References

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Grants and funding

This study was supported by Current Research Funds 2024, Ministry of Health, Italy.