Abstract
The concept of Quality of Life (QOL) has gradually been accepted as an important therapeutic goal for chronic diseases in recent two decades. However, we have never yet obtained "Golden Standard" for measuring QOL because of its broad bio-psycho-environmental concept. We originally developed a new self-completed questionnaire for QOL (QUlK) according to the holistic system theory, which is divided into four domains including physical functioning (20 questions), emotional adjustment (10 questions), interpersonal relationship (lO questions) and attitudes toward life (10 questions) in total of 50 questions, In this study we selected 212 patients with various chronic vascular disorders such as cerebral vascular disease (67 patients), ischemic heart disease (38 patients) and hypertension (107 patients) aged over 40 years (mean 68d±13 years) in order to evaluate reliability, validity and usefulness of QUIK. The internal consistency of QUlK was α=0. 88 (KR formula 20). There existed tight correlation among four domains each other. And each total score more and more increased as disorder got worse. In item analysis significant weakness of discriminating power was found in 3 questions, that is, incontinence, suspicion and troublesome in everyday life. On the other hand, very close correlation was seen among some questions, in particular, among present activities, sexual interest, difficulty of taking care of his-, or herself, which suggested mind-body-environmental correlation in chronic vascular disorders. It showed that total score of QUlK was influenced by various factors such as age factor or the severity of disorder according to analysis by quantification method of the first type. Finally, when we divided each total score of QUIK into following six classes ; 1) excellent, score O (ratio of incidence 2. 8%), 2) good, score I to 3 (15,l%), 3) fair, score 4 to 9 (32. 5%), 4) poor, score 10 to 18 (32. l%), 5) very poor, score 19 to 29 (15. 1%) and 6) grossly impaired, score over 30 (2. 4%), renewed distribution of QUlK showed nearly same proportion as that of normal distribution. Our results suggested that QUlK must be reliable, valid and useful for assessing therapeutic efficacy on psychosomatic disorders or rehabilitation in the elderly.
