Estudo da qualidade de vida em pessoas com lesão medular

Abstract

Quality of life theme is gaining interest in health in last decades. Because has proved a powerful tool for investigating and assessing patients, therapeutic interventions, and services in health. This study aimed to evaluate the quality of life of people with traumatic spinal cord injury based on the perception of the injured spinal cord. The subjects were individuals with SCI living in the Manaus city, which were affected by the injury in the period 2000 to 2010 and received at the Getulio Vargas University Hospital - HUGV. The instrument used to measure quality of life was the subject of the Portuguese version of the World Health Organization Quality of Life - Bref. A questionnaire was also applied to characterize socio-demographic subjects as well as knowing the causes of trauma and time of injury. It was examined the level of functional independence of the subjects through the Functional Independence Measure - FIM. Data analysis was performed using descriptive statistics and correlate the variables, age, gender, functional independence, socioeconomic status, time of injury, the sequel to the quality of life of individuals we used the Spearman correlation coefficient. The results showed a level of quality of life mean, and between the domains of quality of life those who had lower satisfaction among its facets were areas: social and environmental. In general the domain with the lowest score was the environmental field. When I checked whether there was correlation between the presenters that the only correlation was the age, the younger the better the assessment of quality of life perhaps better social integration on the part of the newest. We conclude that the factors that lead to an assessment of quality of life to a negative level are external factors, in other words, something that is not inherent in disability or deficit but inherent to environmental conditions. Keywords: quality of life, spinal cord injury, personal satisfaction.