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Quality of life after traumatic thoracolumbar spinal cord injury: a North Indian perspective

Spinal Cord volume 61, pages 374–382 (2023)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

Study design

Cross-sectional study.

Objectives

To determine the Quality of Life (QOL) in individuals with traumatic Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) of thoracolumbar region in Indian population, the factors affecting QOL and to compare this to other SCI populations.

Setting

Tertiary level hospital in low-middle income country.

Methods

93 individuals with SCI of minimum 1 year duration since injury were included in the study. Baseline demographics, socioeconomic parameters, and incidence of complications were ascertained. World Health Organisation Quality of Life-BREF (WHOQOL-BREF) score was used for measurement of QOL and was then compared to healthy Indian population and other SCI studies. Subgroup analysis was done to find out impact of variables on different domains of WHOQOL-BREF.

Results

The median (IQR) age of the study participants was 35 (25, 45) with a male predominance. The median (IQR) duration since injury in the study population was 50 (26, 70) months. Lowest mean (SD) score was observed in the psychological domain −50.3 (12.1) and comparison to healthy Indian and high-income SCI populations revealed drastically decreased scores across all domains (p < 0.01). Employed individuals and housewives had significantly higher scores across all domains than unemployed individuals (p < 0.05). American Spinal Injury Association Impairment Scale (AIS) grade, socioeconomic status, pain and presence of complications all had significant impact on domain scores (p < 0.05). Multiple regression analysis revealed that mobilisation status and pain had the greatest effect on QOL.

Conclusion

Individuals with SCI have low QOL scores as compared to general Indian population as well as SCI individuals from a high resource setting. Pain and dependent mobilisation were found to be most significant predictors of poor WHOQOL-BREF domain scores. Housewives were found to have domain scores comparable to employed individuals. Presence of complications negatively impacts QOL.

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Data availability

The authors declare that the data is transparent. The original data has been entered in Microsoft Excel and can be made available in case the journal wishes.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Mrs. Kusum Chopra and Dr. Rishi for doing the statistical analysis of the study.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Orthopaedics, Government Medical College and Hospital (GMCH), Chandigarh, India

    Rohit Jindal, Sandeep Gupta & Sudhir Kumar Garg

  2. Department of Orthopaedics, Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER), Chandigarh, India

    Parth Bansal

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  1. Rohit Jindal
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  4. Sudhir Kumar Garg
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Contributions

PB did literature search, enrolment, wrote the first draft and approved the final manuscript. RJ conceived the idea for the study, supervised the study, edited the first draft, and approved the final manuscript. SG and SKG gave intellectual input and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Parth Bansal.

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Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Ethical approval

Ethical approval was obtained from the Institutional Ethics Committee vide No. IEC/2017/155; IEC Registration No. ECR/658/Inst/PB/2014/RR-2017.

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Written informed consent was taken from all participants.

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Jindal, R., Bansal, P., Gupta, S. et al. Quality of life after traumatic thoracolumbar spinal cord injury: a North Indian perspective. Spinal Cord 61, 374–382 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41393-023-00900-7

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