Stroke patients after neurological inpatient rehabilitation: a prospective study to determine whether functional status or health-related quality of life predict living at home 2.5 years after discharge

I absolutely hate these types of studies. Rather than solving real world stroke problems they figure out useless information that no survivors can use to drive them to recovery. Damn it, do some real work!
http://journals.lww.com/intjrehabilres/Abstract/publishahead/Stroke_patients_after_neurological_inpatient.99720.aspx

Graessel, Elmar; Schmidt, Ralf; Schupp, Wilfried

Published Ahead-of-Print

Abstract

We carried out a prospective study to determine whether stroke patients' functional status or health-related quality of life would predict whether they lived at home 2.5 years after discharge from neurological inpatient rehabilitation. We carried out a single-center prospective cohort study. The outcome 'home care' versus 'death' or 'institutionalization' (nursing home admission) was evaluated 30 months after discharge. A total of 204 stroke survivors with remaining moderate to severe functional deficits at admission to neurological inpatient rehabilitation were included. Clinical data were obtained at admission to and/or discharge from inpatient rehabilitation. Functional status was determined using the Barthel Index; health-related quality of life was assessed using the SF-36 and EQ-5D. The outcome was assessed by telephone interview. Predictors of living at home were calculated using binary logistic regression analysis. In total, 30 months after discharge, 75% of the stroke survivors were still living at home. Multivariate analysis showed that patients continued to live at home significantly more frequently when they had fewer mortality-relevant comorbidities (P=0.001), a higher BMI (P=0.040), a higher increase in functional independence during inpatient rehabilitation (P=0.017), and above all, a better health-related quality of life, measured using the EQ-5D (P<0.001), at discharge. Stroke survivors' health-related quality of life measured with the EQ-5D and the change in functional status during multimodal neurological rehabilitation appear to be the strongest clinically relevant long-term predictors of staying at home.