Functional skills after the rehabilitation of spinal cord injury patients: observation period of 3 years

The increased number of young people with spinal cord injuries in Croatia led us to study their functional abilities after completing medical rehabilitation and extended hospitalisation, as due to destroyed homes, they had no place to return to. They were all wounded during war in Croatia (1990 – 1992) and their average age was 27 years. Our tetraplegic patients achieved a mean Modified Barthel Index (MBI) of 57.3 after completing medical rehabilitation and 61.3, 3 years later, which is a significantly higher rate than is given in Yarkony's study (30.3 – 37.8) where American civilian patients were monitored. 1 Patients with paraplegia showed similar results (74.5 – 76.8) relating to those published by Yarkony (72.0 – 75.6).