gms | German Medical Science

Objective: Patients' quality of life is becoming increasingly the center of diagnostic and therapeutic measures. However, there is often a large divergence between the objective functional restriction and the patient's perception. The present study examines the correlation between subjective and objective functional restrictions and their relation to the quality of life in patients with cervical stenosis scheduled for neurosurgical therapy.

Methods: 19 patients with cervical stenosis (54.7 ± 14.1 years, 5 female) scheduled for neurosurgical therapy were examined presurgically in terms of muscle strength (i.e. according to the British Medical Research Council, MRC), fine motor skills and coordination (i.e. Grooved Pegboard Test, GPT), subjective restrictions (i.e. DASH-Questionnaire, DASH) and patients’ quality of life (i.e. SF 36 Health Survey, SF-36).

Results: All patients showed measurable restrictions in all tests compared to the healthy reference group. There was a significant correlation between the DASH and the SF-36 results (DASH-psychological sum scale r=0.621; p=0.005). However, there was no significant association between the objective GPT and MRC scores to the subjective DASH or SF-36 results. Age and gender of the patients had no significant influence on the test results.

Conclusion: In the present study, there was no correlation between objective and subjective restrictions of patients with cervical stenosis. We conclude that patients' perception of functional restrictions is a subject of individual factors. However, age and gender did not influence the results. Future studies should examine this divergence to identify possible risk factors and to discuss the effects on diagnostic and therapy.