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(Stroke. 2006;37:1958.)
© 2006 American Heart Association, Inc.

Editorials

The Value of Quality of Life Research in Stroke

Brett Kissela, MD

From the University of Cincinnati, Ohio.

Correspondence to Brett M. Kissela, University of Cincinnati, 231 Albert Sabin Way, Cincinnati, OH, United States 45267-0525. E-mail brett.kissela@uc.edu

Key Words: clinical trials • outcomes • quality of life

An extract of the first 250 words of the full text is provided, because this article has no abstract.

See related article, pages 2081–2085.

This issue of Stroke contains an excellent article by Williams et al that deals with an important area of outcomes research: health-related quality of life (HRQOL).¹ Williams and colleagues have previously created and validated the Stroke Specific Quality of Life scale (SSQOL),² which is now being used as a secondary outcome measure in many ongoing stroke clinical trials. In this article, they measure the validity of obtaining the SSQOL from a family proxy.

For many among the readership of Stroke, outcomes research may not be as stimulating as other topics, such as the results of clinical trials or epidemiological studies. Most who pick up this issue will not (or did not) immediately focus on the Williams article and read it first. And yet, research with regard to outcomes such as HRQOL is of increasing importance, especially for clinical trialists.

Stroke clinical trials in general have used "crude" ordinal scales such as the modified Rankin (mRS) to measure functional poststroke outcomes. The mRS is clinically meaningful in that it is a measure of poststroke independence, and independence is an important outcome for our patients. As such, it is an appropriate outcome measure and describing it as "crude" is not intended to criticize studies that have used it. However, measures like the mRS or the Barthel Index are relatively insensitive to change over time (especially if dichotomized in analysis), can exhibit ceiling or floor effects in a given study population, and may poorly represent the . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Related Article:

How Valid Are Family Proxy Assessments of Stroke Patients’ Health-Related Quality of Life?

Linda S. Williams, Tamilyn Bakas, Edward Brizendine, Laurie Plue, Wanzhu Tu, Hugh Hendrie, and Kurt Kroenke
Stroke 2006 37: 2081-2085. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]