Is Fatigue Associated With Short-Term Health-Related Quality of Life in Stroke?

Abstract Tang WK, Lu JY, Chen YK, Mok VC, Ungvari GS, Wong KS. Is fatigue associated with short-term health-related quality of life in stroke? Objective To evaluate the relation between poststroke fatigue and short-term health-related quality of life (HRQOL) in Chinese patients with first or recurrent stroke. Design Cross-sectional survey. Setting Acute stroke unit of a general hospital. Participants A total of 458 patients with acute ischemic stroke admitted to the acute stroke unit of a university-affiliated regional hospital in Hong Kong. Interventions Not applicable. Main Outcome Measures HRQOL was assessed with the Medical Outcomes Study 36-Item Short Form Health Survey (SF-36) at 3 months after the subjects' index stroke. Fatigue was evaluated by using the Fatigue Severity Scale (FSS). The correlation between the FSS and SF-36 scores was examined and adjusted for potential confounders, including age, sex, marital status, previous stroke, social support, global cognitive functions, neurologic deficits, and depressive symptoms. Results Univariate analysis revealed that fatigue was a significant correlate of all SF-36 domain scores. The magnitude of correlation was highest for the vitality domain ( r =−.605, Bonferroni corrected P