Thomas Ewert¹; Michaela Fuessl²; Alarcos Cieza²; Christina Andersen²; Somnath Chatterji²; Nenad Kostanjsek²; Gerold Stucki²
1: Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation 2: Classification, Assessment, Surveys and Terminology Team World Health Organization Geneva Switzerland
DOI: 10.1080/16501960410015362

Objective: To identify the most common patient problems in patients with 12 different chronic conditions using the ICF checklist.
Methods: A multi-centre, cross-sectional study with convenient samples of patients who had received a clinical diagnosis of any of 12 different chronic conditions undergoing inpatient or outpatient rehabilitation. To describe the population, age, gender, and the SF-36 were recorded. Data for 917 patients from 33 rehabilitation centres were analysed.
Results: Most of the ICF-checklist categories were common to at least 1 condition. Pain was the sole category of 125 ICF-checklist categories that was common to all chronic conditions. Patients with low back pain, rheumatoid arthritis, and diabetes mellitus did not often experience the problems listed in the ICF-checklist.
Conclusion: The main finding, that in most conditions categories from each component were common, underscores the need to address all components when assessing functioning and health in patients with chronic conditions.