Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate health-related quality of life in patients with chronic low back pain and to evaluate the impact of pain and clinical and functional status on quality of life.

Metarials and Methods: Two hundred patients with chronic low back pain and 200- sex and age-matched healthy controls were included in the study. After detailed lumbar region examination, evaluation of pain was performed using the Short-Form McGill Pain Questionnaire (SF-MPQ), functional capacity by the Functional Rating Index (FRI), and quality of life with the Short Form-36 (SF-36). In addition, the SF-36 was used to evaluate quality of life in the controls.

Results: The patients had significant lower scores for physical functioning, physical role, bodily pain, emotional role and Physical Component Summary (PCS) on the SF-36 compared to healthy controls (p<0.001). PCS scores on the SF-36 in women, housewives, patients with primary school education, patients with low back and leg pain and patients with more severe clinical findings were lower (p<0.05). However, females, housewives, patients with primary school education had significantly higher scores for Mental Component Summary (MCS) (p<0.05). Mean scores of the FRI, SF-MPQ and the visual analogue scale in patients with chronic low back pain were 8.5±3.0, 16.7±8.0, and 6.9±1.2, respectively. PCS scores on the SF-36 significantly negatively correlated with total and all subscale scores of SF-MPQ, and FRI total scores (p<0.001), whereas, we found no correlation of MCS scores on the SF-36 with SF-MPQ and FRI scores (p>0.05).

Conclusion: In this study, we observed that, especially physical component of health-related quality of life was worse in the patients with chronic low back pain compared to healthy controls, and pain severity, clinical and functional status negatively affected the physical component of quality of life.