Need and availability of assistive devices to compensate for impaired hand function of individuals with tetraplegia.

Context/

Objective

To evaluate the availability and self-declared unmet need of assistive devices to compensate for impaired hand function of individuals with tetraplegia in Switzerland.

Design

Cross-sectional survey.

Setting

Community.

Participants

Individuals with tetraplegia, aged 16 years or older, living in Switzerland.Interventions: not applicable.Outcome Measures: The self-report availability and unmet need of 18 assistive devices for impaired hand function was analyzed descriptively. The availability of devices was further evaluated stratified by sex, age, SCI severity, independence in grooming, time since injury, living situation, working status, and income. Associations between availability of devices and person characteristics were investigated using logistic regression analysis.

Results

Overall 32.7% of participants had any assistive device for impaired hand function at their disposal. The most frequent devices were adapted cutlery (14.8%), type supports (14.1%), environmental control systems (11.4%), and writing orthosis (10.6%). In the bivariate analysis several factors showed significant associations with at least one assistive device. Nevertheless, when controlling for potential confounding in multivariate analysis only independence in grooming (adapted cutlery, environmental control systems, type support, speech recognition software), SCI severity (writing orthosis, type support), and sex (adapted kitchenware) remained significantly associated with the availability of the mentioned assistive devices. The self-declared unmet need was generally low (0.7% - 4.3%), except for adapted kitchenware with a moderate unmet need (8.9%).

Conclusion

This study indicates that most individuals with tetraplegia in Switzerland are adequately supplied with assistive devices to compensate for impaired hand function. The availability depends mainly on SCI severity and independence in grooming.