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Abstract. When patients with chronic spinal cord injuries have pain as an accessory symptom, ADL training is delayed, and it is often difficult to take measures to cope with this situation. There have been very few reports on pain experienced by patients with spinal cord injuries in the world literature to date, and medical science today still does not know how to treat patients with spinal cord injuries accompanied by pain systematically. Against this background, to clarify the actual state of pain in chronic spinal cord injury patients, we investigated the severity of impairment due to the pain and patients' independence when they underwent rehabilitation training. 1) Out of patients with chronic spinal cord injuries, 43 that had pain (incidence, 51.2%) were enrolled in this study. 2) Many patients in the vertebral fused group had pain in the back, and the pain was likely to disappear following removal of internal fixation. 3) Pain in the nonsurgery group frequently occurred in a sensory extinction area and was intractable. 4) The period until independence in ADL was achieved was 5.6 ± 1.71 months for the complete paraplegia group with no pain, 7.5 ± 3.34 months for the group with disappearance of previous tentative pain, and 11.6 ± 4.89 months for the group with remaining pain. These findings indicate that pain associated with spinal cord injury is a factor that interferes with rehabilitation.

We obtained and analyzed personal health and QOL of 145 players participating in the 2002 Japan Sitting Volleyball Goodwill Games in Hakuba, Japan. QOL was measured by the SF-36 Health Survey providing 8 specific categories of physical and emotional scores summarized into 2 main scores: the Physical Component Score (PCS) and Mental Component Score (MCS). There were 42 players with disabilities and 103 players without any disabilities. There were significant differences between the two groups of participants in physical functioning, role physical, and social functioning among the 8-scale profile functional health and well-being scores, and physical component summary in summary measures (p<0.05). Even though our research showed that almost all of the sitting volleyball players with disabilities could move by themselves, they felt difficulties in several categories of physical functioning and role physical. Considering our results, participation in sitting volleyball may contribute to improve disabled players' QOL. This research indicates that SF-36 is a useful survey for the QOL of people playing sitting volleyball with and without disabilities.