Affidabilità del caregiver nel valutare la qualità di vita del paziente con ictus cerebrale: uno studio esplorativo.

Summary.Reliability of caregivers in assessing the qualityof life of stroke survivors: an explorative study.Introduc-tion.Not all stroke survivors are able to assess their quali-ty of life (QOL), thus a caregiver could provide importantinformation on patients' QOL. Objective.To assess caregiv-er's reliability in measuring QOL in stroke survivors. Method.Fifty (50) patient-caregiver dyads were recruited. Patients,hospitalized in rehabilitation facilities, were administered theStroke Impact Scale 3.0 (SIS 3.0) patient version, the BarthelIndex, the Modified Rankin Scale, and the National Insti-tute of Health Stroke Scale. Caregivers completed the SIS3.0 proxy version. Results.The mean scores of the SIS 3.0patient version were very similar to the proxy version andranged from 19.1 vs 16.2 for the Hand function domain to83.81 vs 81.85 for the Communication domain. Caregiverstended to underestimate patients' QOL although scores werenot significantly different. Intraclass correlations betweenthe patient version and the proxy version of the SIS 3.0 werehighly significant (p<0.001), with coefficient over 0.80. Lower coefficients were observed for the Social participation (0.58),Emotion (0.64) and Communication (0.79) domains. Conclusions.Caregivers were more reliable in assessing the physical rather than psychosocial domains.Key words:quality of life, stroke survivors, caregiver, care-giver assessment