DESIGN: Cross-sectional survey.
SETTING: Community, 22 countries including all World Health Organization regions.
PARTICIPANTS: Persons (N=12,591) with traumatic or nontraumatic SCI aged 18 years or older.
INTERVENTIONS: Not applicable.
MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: We estimated the prevalence of problems in 53 areas of functioning from the Brief International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) core set for SCI, long-term context, or ICF rehabilitation set covering 4 domains: impairments in body functions, impairments in mental functions, independence in performing activities, and restrictions in participation. Associations between areas of functioning were identified and visualized using conditional independence graphs.
RESULTS: Participants had a median age of 52 years, 73% were male, and 63% had paraplegia. Feeling tired, bowel dysfunction, sexual functions, spasticity, pain, carrying out daily routine, doing housework, getting up off the floor from lying on the back, pushing open a heavy door, and standing unsupported had the highest prevalence of problems (>70%). Clustering of associations within the 4 functioning domains was found, with the highest numbers of associations within impairments in mental functions. For the whole International Spinal Cord Injury sample, areas with the highest numbers of associations were circulatory problems, transferring bed-wheelchair, and toileting, while for the World Health Organization European and Western Pacific regions, these were dressing upper body, transferring bed-wheelchair, handling stress, feeling downhearted and depressed, and feeling happy.
CONCLUSIONS: In each domain of functioning, high prevalence of problems and high connectivity of areas of functioning were identified. The understanding of problems and the identification of potential targets for intervention can inform decision makers at all levels of the health system aiming to improve the situation of people living with SCI.
METHODS: The initial proposals were based on 5 main areas of PRM research: biosciences in rehabilitation, biomedical rehabilitation sciences and engineering, clinical PRM sciences, integrative rehabilitation sciences, and human functioning sciences. This list became a model for structuring the abstracts for the 9th and 10th World Congresses of PRM, held in Berlin, Germany (2015) and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (2016), respectively. The next step was to evaluate the implementation of this model in both congresses.
RESULTS: It was found that the 5 main research areas were still used as the main principles (chapters) in which to organize the abstracts. However, some modifications have been made to cover topics that were not included in the initial proposal.
CONCLUSION: A more comprehensive list of topics has been developed, not only for topic list announcements, but also for the structuring and classification of abstracts for future international, regional or national PRM congresses.