A review of health-related quality-of-life measures in stroke

The objective of this review was to evaluate health-related quality of life (HR-QOL) measures for use with patients with stroke. HR-QOL measures are increasingly used for assessment in many health conditions; these measures may serve an important role in evaluating the impact of stroke and of stroke interventions. HR-QOL measures used in patients with stroke should: (i) cover the domains of HR-QOL that may be affected by stroke; (ii) have administration characteristics suitable for use in patients with stroke; and (iii) have undergone reliability and validity assessment in patients with stroke. The present study evaluates HR-QOL measures with reference to these requirements. A systematic literature review was conducted to identify and evaluate HR-QOL measures of potential use in studies of patients with stroke. Identified measures were assessed with regard to stroke-relevant domains covered, measure characteristics (e.g. self-administration versus administration by an interviewer, interviewer time to complete) and psychometric properties of reliability and validity. The measures evaluated vary widely on domains covered, and limited assessment of the performance of HR-QOL measures has been conducted in patients with stroke. No existing measure comprehensively covers all relevant domains or addresses fully the issues of obtaining and combining HR-QOL assessments in patients and proxies in many stroke populations. Additional psychometric testing in stroke populations is needed for existing HR-QOL measures. In addition, stroke-targeted HR-QOL measures need to be developed and evaluated with patients with stroke.