Marital outcome and its influencing factors of married patients with spinal cord injury

English Keywords:Spinal cord injuries  Marital outcome  Influencing factors

English Abstract:

  【Abstract】 Objectives： To study the marital status of patients with spinal cord injury and its influencing factors on marital relationship after injury. Methods： A cross-sectional survey was conducted on the married patients with spinal cord injury admitted to our hospital from January 1, 2016 to May 31, 2016. According to the inclusion criteria: ①confirmed by CT or MRI with spinal cord injury and with paraplegia or quadriplegia, ②married patients before the injury, gender and age are not restricted, ③willing to participate in this study, and exclusion criteria:①associated with brain trauma, mental illness(such as cognitive dysfunction), ②married patients after injury, a total of 115 patients were included in the study. Questionnaires were used to collect data. The questionnaire included gender, age, educational level, the number of marriage years before injury, the monthly family income before injury, the number of children before the injury, the life satisfaction after injury, the change of husband and wife relationship and the nerve injury. The outcome of post-injury marital relationship was analyzed according to the four-class count analysis defined as emotional warming, no change, decline and divorce. The qualitative data among the four groups were analyzed by rank sum test of ordered multi-classification data. The comparisons of sex life satisfaction among groups were analyzed by ANOVA. According to the two-class count analysis of warming or no change, descent or divorce, Logistic regression analysis was used to analyze the marital outcome factors of married spinal cord injury patients. Results： In 115 patients with spinal cord injury, 13(11.3%) chose feelings to heat up, 43(37.4%) chose feelings no change, 40(34.8%) chose feeling down, 19(16.5%) chose divorce. According to the four-class count analysis, the number of marriage years before injury affected the distribution of marital relations after injury. By comparison between two groups, only the difference between 4-6 years group and 10 years and above group was statistically significant. By comparing the average rank of the two groups, the marital relations after injury in the 10 years and above group was better. There was no significant difference in the distribution of marital relations after injury among these factors, such as gender, age, educational level, nerve injury plane, the monthly income before injury, the number of pre-injury children(P>0.05). The average satisfaction of sexual life of the spinal cord injury patients was 3.2, which was shown to be less satisfactory. There were significant differences(P<0.05) in sexual satisfaction among the four-class count analyses of emotional warming, no change, decline and divorce. The sexual satisfaction of no change group was higher than that of feeling down group and divorce group(P<0.05). There was no statistically significant difference(P>0.05) in sexual satisfaction between male and female. The above factors were analyzed according to the two-class count analysis, univariate analysis showed that the level of nerve injury, monthly family income before injury and post-injury sexual satisfaction had significant effects on marital relations(P<0.05). Multivariate analyses showed that the level of satisfaction and the sexual satisfaction after injury(P<0.05) had significant effects on the marital relationship. Cervical spine injury as a reference, thoracic, lumbar damage after injury, the probability of deterioration of the relationship after the marital injury were 4.126 times and 3.619 times. Conclusions: The divorce rate of married spinal cord injury patients was 16.5%. Marital outcome is affected by many factors. The most important factors are the satisfaction of sexual life and the plane of nerve injury.