1.1 Background
Health-related quality of life (HRQOL) is considered as an important outcome measure and aims to measure how the individual’s functions are affected by the disease and changes in their functions. These subdimensions usually determine whether there is a lack of physical, psychological or social functions8.
It is useful to determine health-related quality of life in order to specify health care and treatment strategies, to make patient -specific planning, and to evaluate the effectiveness of health care and treatment12. Many bodily functions of stroke patients are affected adversely, and therefore evaluation of the quality of life of stroke patients carries utmost importance.
The concept of quality of life (QOL) is defined as a multidimensional concept that includes physical, psychological / spiritual and socio-economic well-being13. QOL is a complex concept involving highly subjective parameters and there is no common measurement tool. Although there are approximately 5000 disease-specific generic scales, a universal scale for quality of life assessment is lacking7. Health-related quality of life instruments are widely used to measure disease burden, to assess treatment modality, and to facilitate comparative evaluations14.  Subjective effects of stroke cannot be evaluated by objective measurement tools. For this reason, the health-related quality of life of stroke patients is evaluated using many measurement tools that assess subjective well-being which are quite widely employed in evaluations of health state of the patients in recent years8, 15, 16.
Generic or specifically standardized scales are being used to evaluate objective quality of life in stroke. The most common generic quality of life scales used in stroke are Nottingham Health Profile (NHP) and Short form-36. However, disease-specific scales developed in recent years have been frequently used in studies to assess the quality of life of these patients17.
In studies where stroke-related quality of life has been evaluated, frequently disease-specific SSQOL scale has been used9, 19-21.
It has been reported that assessments made with disease-specific scales measure the patient’s physical functions and well-being better than the generic scales. Because they have been prepared considering the symptoms of the disease so as to obtain more specific measurement results17,22. SF-36 and SSQOL scales were used together in validity studies9 and in patients suffering from aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage for the purpose of comparative evaluation14. However, we haven’t encountered any study that compared the SSQOL with other similar scales in stroke patients. This study was performed to compare the Turkish version of the SSQOL with the less frequently used SF- 36 scales to determine HRQOL in stroke patients, to evaluate the effectiveness of both scales and to assess whether these two scales differ according to sociodemographic characteristics of stroke patients.
2. METHODS