Recovered? Association between self-perceived recovery and the SF-36 after minor musculoskeletal injuries.
OBJECTIVE
Recovery after minor musculoskeletal injuries is often disproportionately protracted. Our aim was to relate Short Form-36 (SF-36), to self-perceived recovery assessed with the question" Do you feel recovered". We hypothesized that restitution of physical factors would be reported at least as often as improvement of symptoms or impairments and that social and mental factors would dominate over physical as determinants for recovery. We followed 318 patients with minor traffic-related injuries for up to 6 months.


RESULTS
For all SF-36 subscores more than 60% of the recovered patients had returned to their pre-injury levels. The subscores with the highest proportions (> 80%) were all mainly reflecting disability. For no subscore, however, was the proportion 100%. Normalizations in the SF-36 subscores for "Bodily Pain" (BP) (Odds Ratio, OR = 7.2), "Role limitations due to physical function" (OR = 5.3) were associated with self-perceived recovery.


CONCLUSIONS
Abolition of pain appears to be paramount for the self-perceived recovery, but it is neither a sufficient nor a necessary prerequisite. Contrary to our expectation, physical aspects of functional health status were more strongly associated with recovery than were emotional or social aspects.
Ottosson
Carin
C
Department of Orthopaedics, Karolinska Institutet at Stockholm Söder Hospital, SE-118 83, Stockholm, Sweden. carin.ottosson@sodersjukhuset.se
Pettersson
Hans
H
Johansson
Sven-Erik
SE
Nyrén
Olof
O
Ponzer
Sari
S
D000328:Adult; D001842:Bone and Bones / Q000293:injuries*; D005260:Female; D006305:Health Status Indicators; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D018482:Muscle, Skeletal / Q000293:injuries*; D009140:Musculoskeletal Diseases / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology*; D011788:Quality of Life; D020127:Recovery of Function; D012649:Self Concept