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Demented person?s Quality of life. A Belgian longitudinal research.
Di Notte, D., Ylieff, M., De Lepeleire, J., Buntinx, F.
Introduction
Demented persons? quality of life arouse a growing interest. It raises many methodological problems. Those sustain a debate: using self-rating versus ?proxy? ratings. Notwithstanding his opinion, everyone agree with the fact that measuring demented person? QoL is essential. It means: taking into account demented persons? experiences, feelings and thought. We chose the "Alzheimer Disease Related Quality of Life" (Rabins and al., 1999) for studying subjects? QoL?s evolution between 2002 and 2004 (ongoing research). It is specifically created for demented persons.
Methods
ADRQL? s items (47) are divided into five dimensions: social interaction, awareness of self, feelings and mood, enjoyment of activities and response to surroundings. Five scores and a global score are obtain. Those vary from 0 (poorest quality of life) to 100 (best quality of life).
297 subjects of 65 (and more) years old were interviewed in 2002 and 2003. The sample is composed of 249 women (84%) and 48 men (16%), 20% are coming from home (n=58) and 80% from residential care (n=239), 230 subjects (77%) are demented (clinical diagnosis).
Results
Data analyses shows a global QoL?s improvement between 2002 and 2003. No change are observed between home and residential care during this period. Lastly, global QoL?s changes differ according to clinical diagnosis. ?Normal? subjects? QoL is significantly higher in 2003. Demented subjects? QoL does not change between 2002 and 2003. However, some of these changes disappear taking some variables (psychological and behavioural signs, caregivers? burden and caregivers-demented person?s relation) into account. Those results will be discussed.
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