Health Domain Importance in the Aging Stroke Patient

Indiana Univ-Purdue Univ At Indianapolis, Indianapolis IN

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Linked publications & trials

Abstract

This project is relevant to Objective #24 in 02-049, which calls for improved measures of chronic disease disability and its effects on well-being in aging patients, and measures of health and the burden of illness that can be used in a national health accounts system. We address stroke-related quality of life (QOL), a common problem in the aging patient, and one not adequately captured by the domains of existing preference based indexes. Our aims are as follows, to begin the process of building a better societally-based summary measure of preference in stroke: 1). Find the most important stroke-specific QOL domains: Given previous research which will guide us, there are likely 12 or more domains that could be considered. In Interviews we will conduct, 100 recovering stroke patients will rank the importance of these domains. With this data we will eventually develop a multi-attribute utility instrument to better measure stroke outcomes from a societal perspective in a subsequent R01 application to NIA. For this next step to be successful, we must identify 8 or fewer of the most important domains, as is suggested by previous psychological and MAU research. Then, in subsequent work, the domains will be valued by society and a multiplicative MAU function derived. 2). Domain reduction to the 8 or fewer of the most important domains: Information will be provided by four sources, one relating to importance and three to content: a).rankings by patients to discriminate most from least important domains b). patient opinions of domain content redundancy c). a priori content hypotheses of the investigators d). Utilization of other research on stroke domain content redundancy in progress at our institution. 3). Secondary Aim: Evaluate relationships of domain rankings to other data: We will also obtain other information, e.g., demographics, cumulative illness ratings, depression screening, and stroke severity. Importance rankings will be compared to these variables for meaningful trends.