• Mei-Chuan Hung, Yuan-Horng Yan, Po-Sheng Fan, Ming-Shian Lin, Cheng-Ren Chen, Lu-Cheng Kuo, Chong-Jen Yu, Grace Yao, Ching-Lin Hsieh, and Jung-Der Wang.
• Institute of Occupational Medicine and Industrial Hygiene, College of Public Health, National Taiwan University, and Department of Internal Medicine, National Taiwan University Hospital, Rm. 719, No 17, Xu... more zhou Rd, Taipei, Taiwan. less
• Qual Life Res. 2010 Jun 1; 19 (5): 721-7.

PurposeThis study reports how QOL (quality of life) assessments differ between patients on prolonged mechanical ventilation (PMV) and their proxies (family caregivers and nurses).MethodsWe enrolled consecutive subjects on PMV for more than 21 days from five institutions. We conducted QOL assessments using the Taiwanese version of the EQ-5D in face-to-face interviews. Direct caregivers (family members and nurses) also completed the EQ-5D from the patient's point of view.ResultsFor 55 of the 142 enrolled patients who were able to assess their QOL, we recruited 44 patient-family caregiver pairs, 53 patient-nurse pairs, and 42 family caregiver-nurse pairs. There were 81 family caregiver-nurse pairs out of 87 patients with poor cognition. The agreement between patient-family caregiver pairs was generally higher than that of patient-nurse pairs. As the proportions of exact agreement between family caregivers and nurses for patients with poor cognition were 98-99% for observable dimensions of mobility, self-care, and usual activities, they lead to a minimal difference in the final values.ConclusionsQOL assessments from family caregivers agreed more closely with patients than did those from nurses using EQ-5D evaluations for patients with clear cognition, but either proxy was acceptable for rating PMV patients with poor cognition.

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