Prospectief onderzoek naar de verschillen in gezondheidsgerelateerde kwaliteit van leven van patiënten met chronische rugpijn, RSI en whiplash vóór, tijdens en na multidisciplinaire behandeling

Summary

A prospective study on the differences in health-related quality of live of patients with chronic back pain, repetitive strain injury and whiplash, before, during and after multidisciplinary treatment.

In the literature, some authors regard the different ‘somatic functional syndromes’ as part of one ‘underlying’ syndrome, whereas others regard them as real different syndromes. In this study the hypothesis was tested that there would be no difference in health-related quality of life of three distinct groups of patients (repetitive strain injury, chronic back pain en whiplash) and that the response of these three groups to multidisciplinary treatment in terms of healthrelated quality of life would be equal. A second question was to which degree and in which aspects health-related quality of life of the patients in this study would achieve the level of the general community after multidisciplinary treatment. Health-related quality of life was measured with the SF-36. The results of this study rejected the first hypothesis; RSI-patients report a better overall health-related quality of life, whereas whiplash patients experience more problems with vitality and social functioning and chronic back pain patients experience more disabilities in daily life. However, during the multidisciplinary treatment the SF-36 profiles of the three groups became more similar. It is concluded that assessing the differences of disorders is important because it will lead to a more directed research of the underlying mechanism.