Assessment of the relationship between Quality of Life and Upper Extremity Impairment Due to Occupational Injuries

Background: Severe upper extremity injuries can affect the quality of life in patients and cause multi-factorial and long-term costs of disease. The aim of this study was to assess quality of life in patients with upper extremi-ty injuries caused by work-related accidents. Methods: In this study cross-sectional method was used in patients referred to the Occupational medicine Clin-ic of Rasoul Akram Hospital to determine their impairments. Patientʹs information including demographic vari-ables, calculation of the impairment rate based on AMA Guide book (in terms of WPI), returning to work, and location of injury, work experience and type of injury. Then the quality of their life was assessed and interpret-ed using SF36 questionnaire. Results: 203 patients were evaluated. Different aspects of the patients’ life were not associated with age, gen-der and education of patients based on The SF-36 questionnaire. There was an inverse relationship between the percentage of patients’ impairment and different aspects of life quality; there were also a significance correla-tion between impairment rate and physical performance of patients (p < 0.001, r= -0.26), social performance of patients (p= 0.001, r= -0.24), pain (p= 0.005, r= -0.2), emotional health of patients (p= 0.006, r= -0.29), energy / fatigue in patients (p < 0.001, r= -0.29) and the patientʹs general health (p < 0.001, r= -0.27). Conclusion: This study shows that upper extremity impairment due to occupational injuries has an inverse and significant association with various aspects of quality of life.