Kwaliteit van leven bij patiënten met de ziekte van Parkinson: Een kritische evaluatie

Abstract

Quality of life in patients with Parkinson’s disease: A critical evaluation This article reviews studies on quality of life (QOL) in patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD). Traditionally, in this literature, there has been an emphasis on morbidity and mortality. Nowadays, however, there is a shift towards subjective outcomes, such as QOL. QOL is often erroneously used interchangeably with terms like health status (HS). QOL, however, is based on patients’ evaluations with regard to broad aspects of life, while HS is specifically focusing on biopsychosocial functioning. As a consequence, a lot of instruments, including diseasespecific ones, claim mistakenly to assess QOL. In fact, they measure HS with only a few questions touching QOL. The available studies reveal that the HS of patients with PD is worse compared with the HS of (healthy) persons. Studies that really assess QOL are very scarce. As a consequence, the answer to the question ‘What is the influence of PD on patients’ QOL?’ is, for all intents and purposes, still unanswered.