Measuring Quality of Life in Spinal Cord Injury

This chapter aims to describe and evaluate the assessment tools for evaluating Quality of Life (QoL) in people with SCI through a systematic review of scientific literature. The systematic review was conducted in line with COnsensus-based Standards for the selection of health Measurement Instruments (COSMIN) on Pubmed, Scopus, Cinahl, and Web of Science. After removing duplicates, 3333 papers were screened. Of these, 476 were included in this systematic review. Among these, 45 papers were considered for this chapter. Results show 29 assessment tools that evaluate QoL area in persons with SCI. Among the 29 tools included in this chapter resulted that most scales evaluate Health-Related QoL, community integration, and sensorimotor, and prehension functions. The most common assessment tools are the World Health Organization Quality of Life (WHOQOLBREF), which is a questionnaire composed of four domains: Physical Capacity, psychological well-being, social relationships, and environment, and the Community Integration Questionnaire (CIQ), which addresses three central factors of integration: home competency, social integration, and productive activity.