FOCUS ON THE AUSTRIAN W UND ASSOCIATION - EWMA

METHODS
A cross-sectional study was carried out at a major tertiary
care hospital in 2009. Standard questionnaires were
mailed to burn victims treated in a single burn unit during
period of 01/06/2008 - 30/04/2009 more than six months
following their burn injury.
General demographic information (age, gender, education,
place of residence, occupation and marital status),
burn-related information (depth and extent of burn, location
of burn and cause of burn), burn care and therapyrelated
information (information about type and number
of surgical interventions, and complications such as wound
infection, pneumonia, etc.) were obtained from medical
notes and questionnaires. Burn pain intensity was measured
by a numerical rating scale (NRS).
The quantitative characteristics of chronic burn-related
pain were obtained by using the Standard McGill Pain
Questionnaire (Lithuanian version), a validated instrument
widely employed in many clinical studies of pain. It
consists of 54 descriptors from which the patient selected
those that best described his/her pain. The adjectives,
scaled according to relative intensity within each category,
are grouped into three major classes which measure the
sensory, emotional and evaluative dimensions of the pain
experience.
Medical Outcomes Study 36-Item Short Form Questionnaire
(SF-36) was used for this study. The SF-36
describes outcomes in terms of eight separate subscales:
physical functioning, role physical, bodily pain, general
health, vitality, social functioning, role emotional, and
mental health. It also produces two summary scores: the
physical component summary (PCS) and the mental component
summary (MCS). All items in the SF-36 were
scored on a Likert 5 grade scale: 4=extreme, 3=quite a bit,
2=moderate, 1=a little bit and 0=none at all. The overall
scoring of the test was calculated on the sum of the scores
in each item divided by the total number of items and
expressed in percentages (%). This percentage refers to
the degree of alteration of quality of life estimated by the
questionnaire for a particular patient with 100% being
the maximum alteration and 0% being the minimum.
Statistical analysis
Data entry and analysis were performed using the Statistical
Package for Social Sciences version 13.0 (SPSS, Inc.,
Chicago, IL, USA). The qualitative data were presented
as numbers, percentages and as mean (x – ), with standard
deviation (SD) for quantitative variables. The internal consistency
of SF-36 subscales was assessed with Cronbach’s
alpha (a) coefficients with the questionnaire being reliable
if Cronbach’s a value >0.7. The P value of