The three‐year biopsychosocial outcome of 551 hospitalized accidentally injured adults

Abstract

The negative biological, psychological and social outcomes following accidental injuries were assessed after three years in 551 adults by questionnaires, medical records and information from the National Insurance Offices. Fifty‐four percent reported at least one negative outcome. Some reduction of physical function was reported by 31.8% and worsened bodily health by 26.0%. In about half of these cases reduced life quality was the main problem. Of the persons 18.9% claimed worsened psychological health and 18.2% decreased capacity for work as an effect of the injury. It is concluded that accidental injuries are an important source of morbidity and reduced life quality in society and that the long‐term outcomes are best conceived within a biopsychosocial frame of reference.

Pain and life quality within 2 years of spinal cord injury

“…The General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) has been found to be sensitive to changes in psychological status following distressed events, and since somatic symptoms are not included, the 20-item version is particularly recommended to study the psychological status in physically injured patients.5 As many as 70% of the spinal cord injured subjects with pain had a pathological score on the General Health Question naire, while the spinal cord injured subjects without pain had no higher prevalence of psychological distress (24%) than a normal population sample. 16 There is no reason to believe that higher age per se gives lower quality of life, as a previous study demonstrated that levels of global life-satisfaction were not age depend ent.17 Also, the finding of a high per cent of patholo gical score on GHQ in the patients suffering from pain is in accordance with Lundqvist et ai, 18 who demon strated severe pain to be the only complication that related to lower quality of life in subjects with spinal cord injury. Our clinical impression that pain negatively influences the ability to cope with a severe impairment, even in a relatively early stage after injury, was confirmed in this study.…”

Health Status of Military Women in the Total Force.

“…Smoking has also been associated with exposure to lifetime trauma (Ganz, 2000). Negative biological, psychological and social outcomes, primarily reduced life quality, have been found in victims of accidental injuries three years post Psychosocial correlates of traumatic event exposures 5 hospitalization (Malt, Blikra, & Hoivik, 1989). No study has systematically compared such varied effects across types of traumatic event exposures.…”

Posttraumatische Belastungsstörungen

“…Nach 6 Monaten werden noch in 5-25% posttraumatische Belastungsstörungen beobachtet (Brom et al 1993;Feinstein and Dolan 1991;Mayou et al 1993;Ursano et al 1999). Auch im längerfristigen Verlauf wurden ähnliche Inzidenzraten beschrieben (Koren et al 1999;Malt 1988;Malt et al 1989;Mayou et al 2001;Schnyder et al 2001a). Fünf Jahre nach einem Unfall haben immerhin noch 8% eine chronische posttraumatische Belastungsstörung (Mayou et al 1997).…”