Measuring quality of life in patients with myocardial infarction or stroke: a feasibility study of four questionnaires in The Netherlands.

OBJECTIVE

To test in patients with a history of myocardial infarction or stroke the feasibility of four quality of life measurements--the Nottingham health profile (NHP), the heart patients psychological questionnaire (HPPQ), the sickness impact profile (SIP), and the hospital anxiety and depression scale (HAD).

DESIGN

Subjects were tested and retested after an interval of 14 days: questionnaires were self assessed.

SUBJECTS

Participants were randomly selected from the Rotterdam stroke data bank (stroke patients; n = 16, mean (SD) age 66.0 (11.0) years and from the population based Rotterdam study (myocardial infarction; n = 20, mean (SD) age 72.7 (7.9) years, controls; n = 17, mean (SD) age 72.8 (7.3) years.

MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS

Mean (SD) administration times for the NHP, HPPQ, SIP, and HAD were 7.9 (3.5), 10.5 (4.3), 21.0 (9.8), and 5.5 (2.8) minutes respectively. On average, the test-retest reliability was good, with Spearman correlations ranging from 0.31 to 0.95. In spite of the limited size of the study, all instruments were able to show differences between the study groups. For instance, median SIP total scores for myocardial infarction and stroke patients were 12.4 (interquartile range 7.0-19.1) and 11.4 (5.9-15.4) respectively, compared with 7.7 (3.7-11.3) in the control group (p values of 0.04 and 0.14 respectively).

CONCLUSIONS

This study suggests that use of the four instruments tested may be feasible and reliable for assessing aspects of quality of life in patients with a history of a myocardial infarction or stroke.