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Abstract
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OBJECTIVE: To evaluate how self-reported problems change over time among people with spinal cord injury (SCI).
DESIGN: Cross-sequential analysis SETTING: Medical university in the Southeastern United States. PARTICIPANTS: Participants included 1,997 individuals with traumatic SCI of at least 1-year duration, who were identified from participation in the SCI Longitudinal Aging Study from 1993 to 2018. INTERVENTIONS: none MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: The outcomes analyzed were 6 problem factors defined as health, social isolation, emotional distress, environmental barriers, money, and lack of opportunities. A series of cross-sequential models, using PROC MIXED procedure, were developed to evaluate the initial and change of the 6 problem factors over the six times of measurements in 25 years.
RESULTS: Years post-injury was negatively associated with initial status of problems of social isolation, emotional distress, environmental barriers, and lack of opportunities, as participants with more years post-injury at baseline reported lower scores on each factor. Longitudinally, with increased years post-injury, higher scores were observed on the health problem factor. However, social isolation, emotional distress, environmental barriers, money and lack of opportunities decreased over time with increasing years post-injury.
CONCLUSIONS: Participants had more health problems with increasing years after SCI, but fewer problems of social isolation, emotional distress, environmental barriers, money, and lack of opportunities.
Language: en |