Quality of Life after Spinal Cord Injury: A Multiple Case Study Examination of Elite Athletes

Abstract

A three-times World Champion in BMX (an acronym for Bicycle Motocross) dirt jumps, a Junior World Champion in ski jumping, and a European karate Champion sustained spinal cord injuries at the cervical and thoracic level. Such a severe trauma is tantamount to the end of a professional sporting career. In such a situation, the athlete’s life significantly changes in every aspect of it: health, professional, and social. The greatest sports champions have not yet been portrayed in the context of a strategy they used to deal with an abrupt end of a professional career due to severe injury. A semi-structured interview was conducted with study participants who additionally filled out the WHO Quality of Life Scale. This multiple case series presents the quality of life in elite athletes as well as the social activities they have undertaken regardless of the tragic accident. The results of the research indicate that these people are characterized rather by a positive sense of quality in life, and the way they function in a difficult situation is an inspiration to others.

Impact of Para Athletics on the Quality of Life: A Cross-Sectional Survey Comparing High-Performance, Amateur Athletes and Sedentary Healthy People

“…Although other studies previously reported benefits of sports participation for athletes with disabilities (Diaz et al, 2019;Goraczko et al, 2020;Mendonça et al, 2017;Oh;So, 2022;Peacock et al, 2019), the comparison of QoL between sports participants and non-participants have been poorly studied. The present research included a considerably larger sample of volunteers than the samples used in previous studies, used pairing criteria of the samples, and the results demonstrated the importance at the para-athletics participation on QoL among high performance athletes and amateur athletes with physical disabilities.…”

Impact of Endurance Training on Regeneration of Axons, Glial Cells, and Inhibitory Neurons after Spinal Cord Injury: A Link between Functional Outcome and Regeneration Potential within the Lesion Site and in Adjacent Spinal Cord Tissue

“…Most of our understanding of the regeneration after SCI derives from experimental studies performed on well-characterized SCI models, which do not precisely reflect the variability of human SCI pathology. Recent studies addressing differences between athletes and nonathletes with SCI focus mainly on the mental health and overall quality of life [60,61]. The results indicate that people participating in sport activities appropriate to their degree of disability have a significantly higher quality of life and life satisfaction compared to people not involved in any sport.…”

Traumatische Rückenmarkverletzungen im Sport – eine Analyse eines spezialisierten Traumazentrums von 22 Jahren

“…Oft sind diese Patient*innen im erwerbsfähigen Alter, Familienväter oder -mütter sowie Jugendliche oder Kinder. Darüber hinaus führt eine wesentlich längere Pflegezeit zu schweren finanziellen Verpflichtungen für Familie und Staat [5].…”

“…Häufig sind dies Patient*innen im erwerbsfähigen Alter, Familienväter oder -mütter sowie Jugendliche oder Kinder. Die Tragweite sowohl auf persönlicher als auch auf sozioökonomischer Ebene ist enorm [5].…”