correlation between health-related quality of life in veterans with chronic spinal cord injury and their caregiving spouses

conclusions the results indicate that a decrease in health status level of veterans, physically and mentally, can affect the health-related qol of their caregiving spouses. results the mean age and standard deviation of veterans and their spouses were 48.5 ± 5.9 and 44.8 ± 7.2, respectively and their number of children ranged between 0-6. our data analysis showed that there was a significant difference between the two groups in some domains of the sf-36, including pf, mh, pcs, mcs, bp and gh (p < 0.05), but there was no significant difference in rp, vt, sf and re between the two groups. objectives the purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between health-related qol of veterans with chronic spinal cord injury and their caregiving spouses. patients and methods we designed a cross-sectional study including two groups; veterans with chronic spinal cord injury and their caregiving wives who were living in the city of mashhad, iran. the patients with spinal cord injury were veterans from the iran-iraq war (1980-1988). all the participants filled out the short form 36 (sf-36) health survey questionnaire. a pearson correlation coefficient was calculated for the scales of the two groups. background recently, investigations have indicated that caring of a chronically ill family member strongly influences the health status and the quality of life (qol) of the caregiving family members.