Evaluation of the quality of life of patients who have suffered a stroke, and the contribution of rehabilitation services

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the quality of life (QoL) of patients after a stroke, and to study the contribution of rehabilitation intervention. METHOD The convenience sample consisted of 103 patients who had suffered a stroke and were receiving rehabilitation services in the Department of Physical and Medical Rehabilitation of the General Hospital of Athens "G. Gennimatas" Research Center. The data were collected during the period October 2018 to March 2019, using the Stroke Specific-Quality of Life Questionnaire (SS-QOLQ) translated into Greek and weighted, and analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (IBM SPSS), version 22.0 software. RESULTS The QoL of patients after a stroke appears to vary significantly depending on their age and occupational and marital status. Specifically, 59.2% of the patients evaluated their overall health status after stroke as moderate, according to their scores on SS-QOLQ. They reported that stroke negatively affected their personality (74.5%), thinking ability (69.6%), self-care (56.5%), vision (54.5%), energy (53.3%), use of upper limbs (43%), and ability to perform various tasks (42.6%). In addition, patients reported that their mood was adversely affected after stroke (45.2%), as well as their walking ability (45.7%) and social (44.9%) and family (44.3%) lives. The average monthly amount that patients were willing to pay for poststroke rehabilitation services was 100 (sic) (range 0-200 (sic)). CONCLUSIONS Neurological deficit and the degree of loss of function after a stroke depend on the extent of brain cell damage, while the QoL of patients is related to a number of other factors, including post-hospital rehabilitation, the degree of support from the family and social environment, and the personality of the patient.