J Trauma
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Meta Analysis
Recovery after injury: an individual patient data meta-analysis of general health status using the EQ-5D.
General information of health-related quality of life pathways to recovery after injury are largely absent from the literature. This article describes a study which: (1) collated and synthesized individual patient data of injured persons from an earlier systematic review and (2) produced general predictions of health-related quality of life for different injury groups for up to 1 year postinjury. ⋯ This study has produced recovery patterns for 27 injury groups using most of the worldwide individual-level data. For many injury categories, recovery is incomplete and takes much longer than estimated. This study infers that the burden of injury is likely being underestimated.