RESEARCH ARTICLE


Assessment of Impact of Spasticity on Activities of Daily Living in Multiple Sclerosis Patients from Saudi Arabia: A Cross-sectional Study



Mansour A Alghamdi1, 2, *, Khaled Abdulwahab Amer3, Abdulrahman Ali S Aldosari3, Razan Saeed Al-Maalwi3, Sereen Dhafer Al-Muhsin3, Arwa Abdulwahab Amer4, Shahd Abdulhakeem Al Hamdan3, Ahmed H. Sakah5, Mohammed Abadi Alsaleem6, Laith AL-Eitan7, 8
1 Department of Anatomy, College of Medicine, King Khalid University, Abha 61421, Saudi Arabia
2 Genomics and Personalized Medicine Unit, College of Medicine, King Khalid University, Abha 61421, Saudi Arabia
3 College of Medicine, King Khalid University, Abha 61421, Saudi Arabia
4 Pharmacy Department, Aseer Central Hospital, Abha 62523, Saudi Arabia
5 Department of Medicine, College of Medicine, Alfaisal University, Riyadh 11533, Saudi Arabia
6 Department of Family and Community Medicine, College of Medicine, King Khalid University, Abha 61421, Saudi Arabia
7 Department of Applied Biological Sciences, Jordan University of Science and Technology, Irbid 22110, Jordan
8 Department of Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering, Jordan University of Science and Technology, Irbid 22110, Jordan

Article Information


Identifiers and Pagination:

Year: 2023
Volume: 16
E-location ID: e187494452301092
Publisher ID: e187494452301092
DOI: 10.2174/18749445-v16-e230111-2022-98

Article History:

Received Date: 7/7/2022
Revision Received Date: 6/12/2022
Acceptance Date: 23/12/2022
Electronic publication date: 15/02/2023
Collection year: 2023

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Creative Commons License
© 2023 Alghamdi et al.

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

* Address correspondence to this author at the Department of Anatomy, College of Medicine, King Khalid University, Abha61421, Saudi Arabia; E-mail: m.alghamdi@kku.edu.sa


Abstract

Introduction:

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic progressive autoimmune disease with several symptoms, including spasticity. This study aimed to illustrate the impact of spasticity on the daily activities of MS patients.

Subjects and Methods:

A cross-sectional study was conducted using a self-administered questionnaire consisting of demographic, clinical characteristics, and MS spasticity scale. A total of 286 patients from Saudi Arabia participated in this study.

Results:

Muscle stiffness occurring due to spasticity in most cases does not bother the patient, except for muscle tightness (32.9%) and stiffness when staying in the same position for a long time (36.7%), which cause extreme discomfort to the patients. Five items of pain and discomfort have been reported to extremely bother the patients (28.0-33.6%). The highest percentage of patients claimed not to be affected by muscle spasm items (29.4%-66.1%), including activities of dressing and sleeping (36.7%-57.7%). More than 30% of the patients found spasticity to affect their walking speed and going up/downstairs. About 36% to 49% did not experience any difficulties with their body movements. The patients also did not exhibit any feelings of discomfort, except for irritation (30.4%) and nervousness (29.4%).

Conclusion:

MS patients are significantly affected by spasticity, and a considerable percentage of these patients experience problems with their movements and activities.

Keywords: Activities of daily living, Health care surveys, Multiple sclerosis, Muscle spasticity, Symptoms, CNS.