Samenvatting

Introduction: The purpose of this systematic review is to investigate which disease-specific measurement tools exist for assessing health related quality of life for stroke patients and to find out which quality of life measurement tools exist for specifically for partners of stroke patients. The members of the group wanted to narrow down the best measurement tool, both for stroke patients and the partners of stroke patients, according to validity, reliability, responsiveness and practicality.

Method: Locating the studies included in this review was mainly done through a search on the Internet, using Medline, Cinhal and Cochrane. Search was done using both keyword setting and advanced search in the database. Reference checking was conducted. Personal communication was obtained with experts in the field of stroke: Per Ragnar Sollie, Svein Erik Pedersen, Signy Ryen, Ingeborg Benterud, Tove Sollum.
The methodological quality of the included articles was assessed and an analysis was conducted on the measurement tools based on the their metric values and practicality.

Results: Seven stroke-specific measurement tools assessing health related quality of life of stroke patients were located and analysed. The measurement tools were: HSQuale, Modified Simple questions, Stroke Adapted 30 item version of Stroke Impact profile (SA-SIP 30), Stroke Impact Scale version 2.0 (SIS Version 2.0), Stroke Impact Scale Proxy version 3 (SIS Proxy Version 3.0), Stroke Impact Scale German version (SIS German Version 3.0), and Stroke-specific Quality of life measure (SS-QOL)
No specific measurement tools for partners of stroke patients were located. Three generic tools used for measuring quality of life of partner of stroke patients were found; Dartmouth Co-op Charts, Visual Analogue Scale (VAS), Short Form 36 (SF-36). However no research could be located that assessed these tools for their validity, reliability, responsiveness and their practicality.

Conclusion: According to the functional demands, the HSQuale was the best health related quality of life measurement tool for stroke patients in terms of its practicality in clinical practise. According to the group, the Stroke Impact Scale version 2.0 was ranked as the best health related quality of life measurement tool for stroke patients when considering validity, reliability and responsiveness.
There is still a lack of published stroke-specific measurement tools for stroke patients and no specific quality of life measurement tools for partners of stroke patients exist. There is also a lack of studies measuring the metric properties of the measurement tools that already exist for stroke patients. The authors of this review therefore feel an obvious need for further research on this matter.