Deans' stroke musings: Determinants of geriatric patients’ quality of life after stroke rehabilitation

Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain! trillions and trillions of neurons that DIE each day because there are NO effective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.

What this blog is for:

My blog is not to help survivors recover, it is to have the 10 million yearly stroke survivors light fires underneath their doctors, stroke hospitals and stroke researchers to get stroke solved. 100% recovery. The stroke medical world is completely failing at that goal, they don't even have it as a goal. Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It lays out what needs to be done to get stroke survivors closer to 100% recovery. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.

Friday, April 4, 2014

Determinants of geriatric patients’ quality of life after stroke rehabilitation

This is so f*cking simple. If a stroke patient has less disability their quality of life will be much better. And you do that by stopping the neuronal cascade of death. Fix these 6 causes.You don't produce worthless research crap like this and just throw up your hands in defeat. GAH!!!!
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13607863.2014.899969#.Uz61sBA1YZk

DOI:: 10.1080/13607863.2014.899969

Bianca I. Buijck^a^b^*, Sytse U. Zuidema^a^c, Monica Spruit-van Eijk^a^d, Hans Bor^a, Debby L. Gerritsen^a & Raymond T.C.M. Koopmans^a

Publishing models and article dates explained
Received: 15 Aug 2013
Accepted: 15 Feb 2014
Published online: 31 Mar 2014

Article Views: 9

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Abstract

Objectives: Geriatric patients’ physical disabilities, dependency on care, and possible psychological ill-being may negatively affect both the patient's quality of life and the informal caregiver burden. Focusing on this interrelationship which can be particularly prominent in geriatric patients with stroke, the objective of this study was to identify determinants of patients’ quality of life and informal caregiver burden.

Method: This is a prospective, multicentre, cohort study. Data were collected in 84 geriatric home-dwelling patients with stroke three months after their rehabilitation period in skilled nursing facilities (SNFs). We assessed patients’ quality of life, depressive complaints, neuropsychiatric symptoms, balance, (instrumental) activities of daily living, and informal caregiver burden. Linear regression models were constructed to study the association between the variables.
Results: For several domains, high quality of life of these geriatric patients was associated with high functional independence, less neuropsychiatric symptoms, and less depressive complaints. Informal caregiver burden was not associated with patients’ quality of life, but patients’ neuropsychiatric symptoms were a significant determinant of high informal caregiver burden.

Conclusion: The presence of neuropsychiatric symptoms (more specifically depressive complaints) negatively affects the quality of life of geriatric patients. Their neuropsychiatric symptoms also affect caregiver burden. Health care professionals in SNFs can play an important role in providing the necessary psychosocial support and aftercare.