Comparing the Quality of Life in Patients with Stroke Under the Treatment with and Without Recombinant Tissue Plasminogen Activator

Stroke has been considered one of the most common life-threatening neurological disease and a global health problem. It causes disability in adults and ranked as the third leading causes of human mortality worldwide.

The aim of this study was to compare the quality of life in patients with stroke in both treated and not-treated groups with recombinant tissue plasminogen activator (rt-PA).

We conducted a cohort study on 126 patients with stroke, including 42 and 84 patients treated with rt-PA and without rt-PA, respectively. We used a disease-specific questionnaire for stroke, including (SSQOL) and EQ5D. Both groups were tested for potential differences regarding socio-demographic characteristics. A multiple linear regression model was exerted to find factors that affected the different aspects of QOL of the whole samples of the patients.

The result of this study showed a significant correlation in the intensity of stroke and patients’ quality of life between two groups of patients with stroke. In other words, the severity in the patients treated with rt-PA is less than a stroke three months after a stroke, and the desirability of living in this group is higher. The results of regression models for each subscale showed that age, sex, utility, hemisphere, and NHISSS were associated with several subscales of the SSQOL; NIHSS was significantly relevant to “language”, “mobility”, “personality” “social roles” and hemisphere damaged significantly correlated with “energy”, “thinking”,” language” (P < 0.05). The patient’s utility was significantly associated with “energy”, “family roles”, “language”, “mobility”, “mood”, “personality”, “self-care”, “social roles”, “upper extremity function”, “work productivity”, and “third severity” subscales (P < 0.05).

In this study, it was seen that there are significant differences between QOL of with rt-PA and without rt-PA, but the limitation of our study was that the results may be different in other countries and even various areas in Iran.