Turkish Journal of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation 1998 , Vol 1 , Num 4

Gonartrozlu Hastalarda Klinik Bulgularda Çeşitli Yaşam Kalitesi Ölçümleri Arasındaki İlişkiler

Simin Hepgüler 1 ,Yeşim Şahin 2 ,Mustafa Barış 2 ,Ramazan Akşit 2
1 Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Ege University School of Medicine, İzmir, Turkey
2 Ege Üniversitesi Tıp Fakültesi, Fiziksel Tıp ve Rehabilitasyon Anabilim Dalı, İzmir

Relationship between clinical findings and various quality of life questionnaires in patients with osteoarthritis of the knee- This study was designed to investigate the clinical findings in patients with osteoarthritis of the knee and to study the relationship between clinical signs and various quality of life questionnaires and the relationship among the appropriate dimensions of them. 118 patient were included in this study. First of all, some questionnes were asked about demographic features, predisposing factors, duration of the pain, pain during resting time and movement, morning stifffnes, feeling of instability and locking. In clinical examination, all patients were evaluated with regard to pain (VAS-visual analog scale) and crepitation during movement, range of motion of both kness, swelling and deformities. All of the questionnaires including NHP, SF-36, Lequesne index and WOMAC were completed by the patients after giving detailed information about them. There was a statistically significant positive correlation between the severity of pain (VAS) and Lequesne index, pain and physical function/mobility scores of WOMAC and NHP (p<0.01). It was found a negative correlation between the severity of pain (VAS) and pain, hpysical and social function dimensions of SF-36 (p<0.01). It was observed that feeling of instability, locking and deformity of the knees may also affect the physical, social and emotional functiones of thepatients and severity of pain increases and physical function becomes bad, when the range of motion of the knees decreases. There were significant correlations among the appropriate dimensions of these questionnaires. It was concluded that all of the questionnaires are useful for evaluating the quality of life of the patients with OA of the knee.

Keywords : Knee osteoarthritis, Quality of life, Clinical findings