| Personality factors have been linked to a variety of health problems. A number of small studies have been conducted exploring the relationship between patient factors and back surgery outcome with varied results. In this meta-analysis, the relationship between the back surgery outcome and elevations on clinical scales of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory and its second edition was examined. Further, moderator effects (such as treatment components, differences in outcome measures, form of MMPI used, gender and age of patient, and location of injury) were analyzed to determine the impact of potential pre-existing factors on surgical outcome. As expected, Hypochondriasis, Depression, and Hysteria did result in medium-sized correlations with treatment outcome. Moderator effects were found in some scales for treatment components and outcome measures. Length of MMPI form used did not uniformly moderate the MMPI-outcome relationship. The implications of these findings are discussed. |
