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Health and Quality of Life Outcomes
Published in: Health and Quality of Life Outcomes 1/2016

Open Access 01-12-2016 | Research

Reliability, validity and clinical correlates of the Quality of Life in Alzheimer’s disease (QoL-AD) scale in medical inpatients

Authors: Gustav Torisson, Lars Stavenow, Lennart Minthon, Elisabet Londos

Published in: Health and Quality of Life Outcomes | Issue 1/2016

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Abstract

Background

There is a lack of standardisation in quality of life (QoL) measurements to be used in older multimorbid patients. An ideal QoL measurement should be reliable, valid, subjective, multidimensional, feasible and generic. We hypothesised that the QoL-AD (Quality of Life in Alzheimer’s Disease) scale could have these properties. Our aim was to determine the psychometric properties and clinical correlations of QoL-AD in a population of elderly, multimorbid medical inpatients.

Methods

QoL-AD was performed in 200 medical inpatients, and available caregivers. Reliability was determined using cronbach’s alpha and corrected item-total correlations. The agreement between patient and proxy ratings were examined using intra-class correlations (ICC). Correlations between QoL-AD and demographic data, comorbidity, cognitive tests, ADL (activities of daily living) and depression were examined. To characterise the underlying constructs of QoL-AD, an exploratory factor analysis was performed.

Results

In total, 199 patients fulfilled the QoL-AD rating, with 139 proxy ratings. Cronbach’s alpha (95 % CI) was 0.74 (0.68–0.79) for patients and 0.86 (0.83–0.90) for proxies. Patient-proxy ICC (95 % CI) was 0.31 (0.16–0.46). Lower QoL was correlated to depression, cognitive impairment, ADL impairment and solitary living, but not with comorbidity. The factor analysis gave a three-factor solution, with factors representing phsyical, social and psychological well-being.

Conclusion

The QoL-AD scale showed some promising properties but more research is needed before it can be recommended in this setting. If replicated, the finding that cognitive impairment, depression and ADL impairment were more associated with lower QoL than somatic comorbidity could have clinical implications for further studies aiming to improve QoL in this population.
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Metadata
Title
Reliability, validity and clinical correlates of the Quality of Life in Alzheimer’s disease (QoL-AD) scale in medical inpatients
Authors
Gustav Torisson
Lars Stavenow
Lennart Minthon
Elisabet Londos
Publication date
01-12-2016
Publisher
BioMed Central
Published in
Health and Quality of Life Outcomes / Issue 1/2016
Electronic ISSN: 1477-7525
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1186/s12955-016-0493-8

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