Objective: To examine the effect of contact with a stroke family care worker on the physical, social, and psychological status of stroke patients and their carers.

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The EuroQol appears to have acceptable concurrent and discriminant validity for the measurement of health-related quality of life after stroke. It may be administered by either a questionnaire for self-completion in patients with mild to moderate stroke or by interview in patients with significant motor deficits.

We found moderate agreement between responses from patients and those from their proxies for the more directly observable domains of the EuroQol. Proxy agreement was less good for the more subjective domains. In health surveys, allowing responses by a proxy increases response rate. However, the disadvantages inherent in the use of proxy responses must be considered carefully. In general, some domains of HRQoL information obtained from a proxy may be sufficiently valid and unbiased to be useable in most types of trials and surveys.

The nature of SVD appears to have been modified by effective treatment of hypertension. Classic risk factors are often absent. The hypothesis that a variety of conditions that enhance small-vessel permeability may contribute to the pathogenesis of SVD merits consideration.

Background and Purpose-The reliability of the EuroQol and SF-36 questionnaires after stroke is not known. We therefore aimed to assess and compare the test-retest reliability of both instruments in a group of stroke patients. Methods-A total of 2253 patients with stroke entered by United Kingdom hospitals in the International Stroke Trial were randomized to follow up with either the EuroQol or the SF-36 instruments. For both instruments, we randomly selected one third of respondents and asked them to complete another, identical questionnaire. We assessed test-retest reliability using agreement statistics: unweighted statistics for the categorical domains of the EuroQol and intraclass correlation coefficients for the EuroQol visual analog scale, utility scores, and SF-36. Results-For the five categorical domains of the EuroQol, reproducibility was generally good ( ranged from 0.63 to 0.80).The reproducibility of the domains of the SF-36 was qualitatively similar for all the domains except mental health (intraclass correlation coefficientϭ.28). However, the 95% confidence intervals for the difference in scores between test and retest were substantial. For both instruments, reproducibility was better when the patient completed the questionnaires than when a proxy did. Conclusions-Both the EuroQol and SF-36 have acceptable and qualitatively similar test-retest reliability. Therefore, either instrument might function effectively as a discriminatory measure for assessing health-related quality-of-life outcomes in groups of patients after stroke. However, our data do not support the use of either instrument for serial assessments in individual patients unless very large differences over time are expected. (Stroke. 1998;29:63-68.)

Despite applying uniform methods, variations in the prevalence of antidepressant prescribing were obvious in the different populations. Database characteristics and clinical factors may both explain these variations.

No abstract