Effect on quality of life of patients of combined physical therapy and rehabilitation programs

The purposes of this study were to describe changes in health-related quality of life of patients between initial assessment and the time of discharge from physical therapy and rehabilitation for common orthopaedic, neurologic and rheumatologic diagnoses.Orthopaedic diagnostic categories were cervical pathologies, shoulder pathologies, lateral epicondylitis, carpal tunnel syndrome, dorsal pain + osteoporosis, thoracic disc herniation, myofascial pain, fibromyalgia, lumbar pathologies, hip and knee osteoarthritis, meniscopathy, common osteoarthritis of body in study. Neurologic diagnostic categories were hemiparesia-hemiplegia and spinal cord injury in study. Rheumatologic diagnostic categories arthralgia, rheumatoid arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, undifferential spondyloarthropathies in study. 250 patients ( 193 women, 57 men ) were included in the study. The mean age was 51.92. Various physical therapy and rehabilitation programs was applied to patients. Patients were evaluated before treatment and after treatment. VAS was used to assess patients pain and sleep disorders and physician global assessment of the patients. HADS was used to assess emotional status of patients. Health- related quality of life was evaluated by the Turkish version of SF-36 and Nottingham Health Profile ( NHP ) questionnaire. FIM instrument was used in hemiparesia-hemiplegia and spinal cord injury.The results showed that there were significant improvements on VAS, all subscales of SF-36 and NHP. HADS mean values before and after treatment showed that patients were not at risk in terms of anxiety. Although, HADS scores were significantly improved. Motor-FIM scores were not improved significantly. After treatment, cognitive-FIM scores were no changes.This study showed combined physical therapy and rehabilitation programs, have successfully improved the quality of life of patients with orthopaedic and rheumatologic diseases. Lack of improvement in patients with neurological disease was attributed to the small number of patients and short follow-up period.Key words: Physical therapy, quality of life, orthopaedic diseases, neurologic diseases, rheumatologic diseases.