Quality of life in caregivers of aged stroke survivors in southern Brazil: Arandomized clinical trial.
Carla Cristiane Becker Kottwitz Bierhals, Fernanda Laís Fengler Dal Pizzol, Gail Low and 3 others
PMID 36722630WHAT IT FOUND
Nurse-led home visits improved caregivers' social relationships and autonomy over a year, but did not change overall quality of life.
Control group scores dropped significantly over time, while intervention group scores remained stable.
Key findings
01The intervention group showed significantly higher social relationship quality of life scores compared to the control group between month 2 and year 1.
02Autonomy scores in the intervention group increased significantly from baseline to year 1, whereas control group autonomy scores decreased.
03There was no significant difference in overall quality of life scores between the intervention and control groups at any time point.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
The study had a small sample size of 48 caregivers, limiting statistical power. Participants were recruited from a single specialized unit in one Brazilian city, restricting generalizability. The WHOQOL-OLD analysis included only 15 caregivers, making those findings less reliable. Internal consistency for some quality of life domains was low, particularly for social relationships and autonomy. The intervention was delivered by specialized nurses in a high-resource setting, which may not reflect standard community care.
Declared interests
Funded by the Fundo de Incentivo à Pesquisa e Eventos do Hospital de Clínicas de Porto Alegre (FIPE-HCPA).
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that nurse-led home visits improve overall quality of life for stroke caregivers. The primary outcome of overall quality of life showed no significant difference between groups, and the benefits were limited to specific sub-domains like social relationships and autonomy.