Standardised health status questionnaires are widely used to obtain subjective assessments of health. However, little research has investigated the meaning of the data they produce. Statistical tests will highlight some problems with the structure and wording of a questionnaire but they cannot shed any light on the way in which respondents interpret questions or their intended meaning when they...

BACKGROUND Back pain is one of the most common health problems for which physicians are consulted, and it can considerably decrease the quality of life of patients during a great part of their lives. OBJECTIVES Our study was designed for assessing the improvement in the quality of life of patients undergoing lumbar discectomy for chronic low back pain. PATIENTS AND METHODS We included 148 p...

BACKGROUND Intensive care unit survivors often have diminished health-related quality of life. OBJECTIVES To describe health-related quality of life of former intensive care patients and identify associated factors 6 months after hospital discharge. METHODS Six months after discharge, 193 patients from an intensive care unit completed the Short Form-36 Health Survey; measures of sleep; Inte...

OBJECTIVE To explore some of the problems encountered in the postal administration of the Short-Form 36 (SF-36). Questions that seem to present particular difficulties for the group are identified. In addition some of the written comments from the questionnaires and people's responses to questions on how difficult they found the SF-36 are discussed. DESIGN The study group were asked to comple...

I have recently reviewed the interesting article by Farzanegan et al. (1), published in the 2011 issue of the Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine: “Quality of life (QOL) evaluation of patients undergoing lumbar discectomy using Short Form 36”. Lumbar discectomy improved both the physical and mental health subscales in patients’ QOL with chronic disc herniation. The mean improvement in physical hea...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE This study evaluated assessments of physical functioning and social functioning using the Stroke Impact Scale (SIS) and Short Form-36 (SF-36) to characterize health-related quality of life for patients after stroke. METHODS The SIS and SF-36 were administered to 278 stroke subjects approximately 90 days after stroke. The SIS-16 and SF-36 Physical Functioning (PF) domain...

[Purpose] This study measured the quality of life in epilepsy and determined associated demographic and clinical factors by means of the Short Form-36 health survey. [Subjects and Methods] 124 consecutive epilepsy patients were enrolled and their demographic variables and clinical characteristics recorded. The Short Form-36 questionnaire was completed independently by each participant. Short Fo...

background: the aim of this study was to determine the treatment outcome of humeral shaft fractures with a locked rigid intramedullary nail in patients indicated for surgical treatment. methods: in this descriptive-cross sectional study, all patients were followed up for one, six, and 18 months post operatively. the short form questionnaire (sf-36) and constant shoulder score were applied. resu...