Evaluation of a questionnaire for obtaining owner-perceived, weighted quality-of-life assessments for dogs with spinal cord injuries

Objective-To evaluate a questionnaire for obtaining owner-perceived, weighted quality-of-life assessments for dogs with spinal cord injuries. Design-Evaluation study. Animals-100 dogs with spinal cord injuries and 48 healthy control dogs. Procedures-The questionnaire was adapted from a questionnaire (the schedule for the evaluation of individual quality of life-direct weighting) used for human patients. Specifically, owners were asked to identify 5 areas or activities they believed had the most influence on their dogs' quality of life, assess their dogs' current status in each of those areas, and provide a weighting for the importance of each area. Results were used to construct a weighted quality-of-life score ranging from 0 to 100 for each dog. Owners were also asked to provide a quality-of-life score with a visual analog scale WAS). Results-A good correlation was found between weighted and VAS quality-of-life scores. Dogs with spinal cord injuries had weighted quality-of-life scores that were significantly lower than scores for control dogs. Quality-of-life areas and activities provided by owners of dogs with spinal cord injuries were similar to areas and activities provided by owners of healthy control dogs and could mostly be encompassed by 5 broader domains: mobility, play or mental stimulation, health, companionship, and other. Conclusions and Clinical Relevance-Results suggested that the questionnaire could be used to obtain owner-perceived, weighted quality-of-life assessments for dogs with spinal cord injuries. Obtaining owner-perceived quality-of-life assessments for individual dogs should allow veterinarians to better address quality-of-life concerns and expectations of owners.