Clinicians who work with patients with chronic leg ulceration (minimum
duration of 3 months) will have noted the profound impact of this con
dition on a patient's quality of life. Research has been slow to ident
ify an appropriate tool to measure this dimension for use in clinical
management. The goal of this study was to identify the usefulness of t
he SF-36 in describing the self-reported health status of patients wit
h chronic leg ulceration. A questionnaire was sent to 63 patients atte
nding a specialist wound healing clinic at a university teaching hospi
tal, and a reminder was sent two weeks later. A 95 percent response ra
te was achieved. Analysis using independent t-tests indicated signific
ant differences for 7 of the 8 sub-scales (p < 0.001), when compared w
ith age-matched norms. These results provide support for the use of th
e SF-36 when describing the functional status and well-being of this p
atient group. Further research is needed to investigate the sensitivit
y of this tool to changes over time for this group and to compare the
performance of this tool with a form of outcome measure specifically d
esigned for patients with this important clinical problem.