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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Determinants of quality of life in Alzheimer's disease
— perspective of patients, informal caregivers, and professional caregivers | | Author(s) | Maria Gomez-Gallego, Jesus Gomez-Amor, Juan Gomez-Garcia |
| Journal title | International Psychogeriatrics, vol 24, no 11, November 2012 |
| Pages | pp 1805-1815 |
| Source | www.journals.cambridge.org/ipg |
| Keywords | Dementia ; Quality of life ; Attitude ; Patients ; Informal care ; Medical workers ; Cross sectional surveys ; Spain. |
| Annotation | Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a chronic medical condition with symptoms that compromise patients' quality of life (QoL). The identification of the factor predicting QoL in AD is essential to the development of more effective interventions. This study explores the QoL predictors considering three different sources of information: patients, caregivers, and healthcare staff. In this cross-sectional study in Murcia, Spain, a sample of 102 patients, their primary caregivers, and 15 members of the healthcare staff evaluated patients' QoL (QoL-AD Scale). Patients' and caregivers' demographic and clinical data (cognitive function, neuropsychiatric symptoms, depression, and caregivers' burden) were considered as QoL predictors. In multivariate-adjusted linear regression analyses, the authors observed that patients' ratings were mainly affected by their mood, whereas caregivers' ratings were also negatively influenced by patients' irritability and burden. According to staff ratings, both psychotic symptoms and neuroleptics were associated with lower QoL. These findings suggest that depression is the main variable related to patients' QoL, and that more careful management of neuropsychiatric disorders is necessary. Both proxies' ratings are not equivalent to patients' reports in terms of predictors, but they are complementary. Thus, a thorough QoL assessment should consider separately the perspectives of the different informants. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-121026115 A |
| Classmark | EA: F:59: DP: LF: P6: QT: 3KB: 76S |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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