'Quality of life at 90 days after stroke and its correlation to activities of daily living': A prospective cohort study

Abstract

Background: The main goal of stroke rehabilitation is to improve the health-related quality of life (HRQoL). In developed countries, several studies evaluating the HRQoL among stroke survivors have been conducted. In India, HRQoL related to stroke as an important health care issue has not received sufficient attention. The study was conducted to encourage the professionals to use stroke-specific HRQoL scales in clinical practice as one of the measures of stroke outcome.

Objectives: To study the correlation between activities of daily living (ADLs) and HRQoL at 90 days following an acute stroke.

Methods: In this prospective study, functional independence of patients admitted with stroke were measured using Barthel Index (BI). At 90 days post-stroke patients were assessed using two questionnaires.

Results: Significant improvement in BI total and domains scores at 90 days (p < .001) were seen. At follow-up, Stroke Specific Quality of Life Scale-12 (SS-QoL-12) score for 59 patients was 48 (high QoL). Individuals scored lowest for psychosocial subscale of HRQoL compared to physical subscale. All items and the total score of the BI showed a significant positive partial correlation (p< .001) with the HRQoL total score. The self-care domain of BI showed the highest correlation with QoL total score at 0.88.

Conclusions: Patient dependent in ADL constantly scored less in all QoL domains. The psychosocial QoL was found to be most affected even in the presence of complete functional independence paving way for further studies on factors that impact psychosocial QoL of stroke survivors.

Keywords: Activities of Daily Living (ADL); Health-related Quality of Life (HR-QoL); Quality of Life (QoL); Stroke; Stroke Specific Quality of Life-12 Scale (SS-QoL 12).