Health-related quality-of-life assessment in patients with low back pain using SF-36 questionnaire

Kotryna Vereščiagina, Kazys Vytautas Ambrozaitis, Bronius Špakauskas

Department of Neurosurgery, Kaunas University of Medicine, Lithuania

Key words: disc herniation; low back pain; health-related quality of life; preoperative SF-36 scores.

Summary. Objective. For complete assessment of benefits of the surgical intervention, it is essential to provide evidence of the impact on patients in terms of health status and health-related quality of life. In the present study, the preoperative 36-item Short Form (SF-36) Health Survey scores were determined in patients before lumbar microdiscectomy due to better preoperative screening likewise in the control group – almost healthy population taken into account any habitual ailments experienced in an appropriate age.

Patients and methods. In the present study, we investigated a cohort of 100 patients with disc herniation causing low back pain and another hundred of the control subjects, matched by age and gender. The short form 36 general health questionnaire (SF-36) was applied.

Results. Estimation of the SF-36 scores showed that (1) all of the domain values were considerably lower in the preoperative patient group than in the second one (P<0.01); (2) the bodily pain scores were closely correlated to the social function scores (R=0.7, P<0.01), whereas the physical function was less related to the bodily pain (R=0.6, P<0.01). The weakest correlation was observed between bodily pain and mental health and general health (R=0.4, P<0.01).

Conclusion. The present study showed that the generic instrument, SF-36 Health Survey, was optimized paraclinical method for patients predisposed to surgical treatment of the lumbar disc herniation disease likewise for normal population individuals, matched by age and sex, in the assessment of health-related quality of life.

Correspondence to K. Vereščiagina, Department of Neurosurgery, Kaunas University of Medicine, Eivenių 2, 50009 Kaunas, Lithuania. E-mail: cotryna@gmail.com

Received 22 September 2006, accepted 12 June 2007