Featured Article Academic Journal Main Category: Stroke Also Included In: Seniors / Aging;Neurology / Neuroscience Article Date: 10 Oct 2013 - 0:00 PDT
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For every 5 quality years of life, 3 are taken away for people who have had a stroke, long-term research has found - a loss of 60%.
The study, published in Neurology, the journal of the American Academy of Neurology, involved 1,188 patients - 748 who had a stroke and 440 who had a transient ischemic attack (TIA). Researchers followed these patients for 5 years.
The researchers used a measure called utility, which put a numerical value on the desirability of various health outcomes for patients responding to a questionnaire.
Utility represents quality of life in single numbers along a continuum, extending from 0.0 (death) to 1.0 ("perfect health"). A negative value represents a state "worse than death."
The authors note that "utilities can be combined with life expectancy to generate quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs)."
The study determined the 5-year QALYs for the participants. This was calculated by multiplying the time spent in a health state by the value assigned to that particular health state.
Out of a possible 5 years of perfect health, people who had a stroke lost 1.71 years due to earlier death and another 1.08 years due to a reduced quality of life.
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Stroke 'causes 60% loss of quality years'