Owner-perceived, weighted quality-of-life assessments in dogs with spinal cord injuries.

Levine, Jonathan M; Budke, Christine M; Levine, Gwendolyn J; Kerwin, Sharon C; Hettlich, Bianca Felicitas; Slater, Margaret R (2008). Owner-perceived, weighted quality-of-life assessments in dogs with spinal cord injuries. Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, 233(6), pp. 931-935. American Veterinary Medical Association 10.2460/javma.233.6.931

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OBJECTIVE

To evaluate changes over time in owner-perceived, weighted quality-of-life assessments in dogs with spinal cord injuries and determine whether scores were associated with underlying etiology or with veterinarian-assigned scores for severity of neurologic dysfunction.

DESIGN

Cohort study.

ANIMALS

100 dogs with spinal cord injury.

PROCEDURES

Duration of dysfunction, modified Frankel neurologic injury score, and etiology were recorded. At initial and recheck (4- to 6-week) evaluations, owners were asked to identify 5 areas or activities they believed had the most influence on their dogs' quality of life, assess their dogs' current status in each area, and provide a weighting for the importance of each area; results were used to construct a weighted quality-of-life score. Owners were also asked to provide a quality-of-life score with a visual analog scale (VAS).

RESULTS

At initial and recheck evaluations, weighted quality-of-life scores were higher for ambulatory than for nonambulatory dogs. However, scores did not differ among groups when dogs were grouped on the basis of underlying etiology or duration of injury. Dogs with an increase in Frankel score between the initial and recheck evaluations had a significant increase in weighted quality-of-life score, whereas for dogs that did not have any change in Frankel score, initial and recheck weighted quality-of-life scores were not significantly different.

CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE

Results suggested that owner-assigned, weighted quality-of-life scores for dogs with spinal cord injuries did not vary significantly on the basis of underlying etiology or duration of injury but were higher for ambulatory than for nonambulatory dogs.

Item Type:	Journal Article (Original Article)
Division/Institute:	05 Veterinary Medicine > Department of Clinical Veterinary Medicine (DKV) 05 Veterinary Medicine > Department of Clinical Veterinary Medicine (DKV) > Small Animal Clinic > Small Animal Clinic, Surgery 05 Veterinary Medicine > Department of Clinical Veterinary Medicine (DKV) > Small Animal Clinic
UniBE Contributor:	Hettlich, Bianca Felicitas
Subjects:	600 Technology > 610 Medicine & health
ISSN:	0003-1488
Publisher:	American Veterinary Medical Association
Language:	English
Submitter:	Bianca Felicitas Hettlich
Date Deposited:	31 Mar 2016 08:37
Last Modified:	05 Dec 2022 14:52
Publisher DOI:	10.2460/javma.233.6.931
PubMed ID:	18795855
URI:	https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/77355