Lebensqualität nach Schwerstverletzung

Abstract

Preventive measures and rapid progress in the acute medical care of accident patients has, in recent years led to a clear reduction in the mortality rate. The question of whether patients will survive has been substantially replaced by the question how they will survive. The present article critically deals with traditional outcome measures used in medicine and pleads for a stronger involvement of patients' self-reported assessment related to impaired physical and mental conditions. After an overview of long-term physical and psychiatric consequences of trauma patients, the often misused term "quality of life" is discussed. On the basis of a commonly accepted definition of the concept of quality of life, an instrument was developed to assess the quality of life in multiply injured patients. By using a specific module TOP (Trauma Outcome Profile) the particular conditions and consequences of polytrauma patients are taken into account. Finally, the great benefit of measuring subjectively perceived quality of life is shown for patients' treatment as well as for physicians and society. A future prospect is given to enable the still insufficiently implemented quality of life measurement in clinical daily practice. For this purpose a computer-assisted version of the POLO-Chart will be generated, which is user-friendly and evaluation is carried out automatically. © 2007 Springer Medizin Verlag.