Turkish Journal of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation 2017 , Vol 63 , Num 1

Comorbidity in a group of vascular stroke patients and the reliability of the cumulative illness rating scale

Nurdan Paker 1 ,Derya Buğdaycı 1 ,Gökşen Gökşenoğlu 1 ,Demet Tekdöş 1
1 Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, İstanbul Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Training and Research Hospital, İstanbul, Turkey DOI : 10.5606/tftrd.2017.66642 Objectives: This study aims to investigate the reliability of the Cumulative Illness Rating Scale (CIRS) and the frequency of comorbidity in stroke.

Patients and methods: Fifty-two consecutive patients who had stroke once (25 males, 27 females; mean age 65.6±9.9 years; range 37 to 83 years), admitted to the stroke unit of the rehabilitation hospital between 01.09.2011 and 31.12.2011, were included in this study. After the first evaluation, three physicians scored the CIRS from the medical records. The same three physicians repeated this process after a one-week interval. Intraclass correlation coefficients were calculated for the measurement of intra-rater and inter-rater reliability studies.

Results: Mean CIRS score was 16±4.4. Mean number of the affected organ systems was 6.8±1.8 (range, 4-12). The intraclass correlation coefficients were between 0.97-0.99. The most common chronic conditions associated to stroke were vascular problems, endocrine and metabolic disorders and psychiatric problems.

Conclusion: As a result, both the intra-rater and inter-rater reliability results of the CIRS were very good in stroke. The patients with stroke had six system problems as a mean in this study Keywords : Comorbidity; cumulative illness rating scale; reliability; stroke