• J Pain Symptom Manage · Jun 2014

    Is the Life Space Assessment applicable to a palliative care population? Its relationship to measures of performance and quality of life.

    • Jane Louise Phillips, Lawrence Lam, Tim Luckett, Meera Agar, and David Currow.
    • The Cunningham Centre for Palliative Care, Sacred Heart Health Care, St. Vincent's Hospital Sydney, and School of Nursing, The University of Notre Dame, Sydney. Electronic address: jphillips@stvincents.com.au.
    • J Pain Symptom Manage. 2014 Jun 1;47(6):1121-7.

    ContextThe spatial environments that palliative care patients frequent for business and leisure constrict as their disease progresses and their physical functioning deteriorates. Measuring a person's movement within his or her own environment is a clinically relevant and patient-centered outcome because it measures function in a way that reflects actual and not theoretical participation.ObjectivesThis exploratory study set out to test whether the Life-Space Assessment (LSA) would correlate with other commonly used palliative care outcome measures of function and quality of life.MethodsThe baseline LSA, Australia-modified Karnofsky Performance Status Scale (AKPS), and the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire-Core 15-Palliative (EORTC QLQ-C15-PAL) scores from two large clinical trials were used to calculate correlation coefficients between the measures. Convergent validity analysis was undertaken by comparing LSA scores between participants with higher (≥70) and lower (≤60) AKPS scores.ResultsThe LSA was correlated significantly and positively with the AKPS, with a moderate correlation coefficient of 0.54 (P<0.001). There was a significant weak negative correlation between the LSA and the EORTC QLQ-C15-PAL, with a small coefficient of -0.22 (P=0.027), but a strong correlation between the LSA and the EORTC QLQ-C15-PAL item related to independent activities of daily living (r=-0.654, P<0.01). A significant difference in the LSA score between participants with higher (≥70) and lower (≤60) AKPS scores t(97)=-4.35, P<0.001) was found.ConclusionThe LSA appears applicable to palliative care populations given the convergent validity and capacity of this instrument to differentiate a person's ability to move through life-space zones by performance status. Further research is required to validate and apply the LSA within community palliative care populations.Copyright © 2014 U.S. Cancer Pain Relief Committee. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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