Predictors of health status and life satisfaction in spinal cord injury

Objective: To analyze relationships between injury-related variables, demographic variables, functional health status, and life satisfaction of people with spinal cord injury (SCI). Design: Cross-sectional survey. Setting: A community in the Netherlands. Subjects: Three hundred eighteen people with SCI, aged 18 to 65 years. Mean age was 39.4 years and mean time after injury was 3.6 years. Main Outcome Measures: Health status was measured with the SIP68. Its six scales were aggregated to three dimensions, measuring physical, psychologic, and social functioning. Life satisfaction was measured with the Life Satisfaction Questionnaire. Data were analyzed by path analysis using LISREL V8. Results: Obtained scores showed that respondents suffered from serious limitations in physical functioning and social functioning, had only a few limitations in psychologic functioning, and were satisfied with their lives in general and with most life domains. Physical functioning was accurately predicted by injury-related variables, but psychologic functioning was not. Next to level and completeness of the injury, the number of secondary complications turned out to be a predictor of functional health. In a path model that had a close fit with the data, injury-related variables were related to health status but not to life satisfaction. Social functioning (-.48), marital status (-.38), psychologic functioning (-.19), and age (-.16) were significant predictors of life satisfaction (total R-2 = .44). Conclusions: This study points out the high prevalence of secondary complications and their importance to the health status of people with SCI. Level of social and psychologic functioning are more important predictors of life satisfaction than the seriousness of the injury. (C) 1998 by the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine and the American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation.