As persons with stroke are surviving longer, monitoring and managing their quality of life is becoming important. We reviewed the Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (KNHANES) in order to evaluate the health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in stroke survivors as measured by the Euro Quality of Life-5D (EQ-5D), and to find out influencing factors. A total of 42,500 subjects were enrolled in the KNHANES, and 575 of them were persons with stroke. The EQ-5D index was lower in persons with stroke than those without stroke, when adjusted for age and sex (with stroke: 0.757±0.012, without stroke: 0.948±0.001, p < .0001). Dimension-specific influencing factors of HRQoL were observed in persons with stroke; mobility problems increased with old age; self-care problems increased with old age and depression; usual activity problems increased with old age, low income, absence of economic activity, and depression; pain/discomfort problems increased with low income. The EQ-5D index was lower in stroke survivors with older age, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, and lack of regular exercise. This is the first study to utilize nationally representative data of the Korean population to investigate the effect of stroke on HRQoL and explore the dimension-specific influencing factors. Further development of rehabilitative interventions for post-stroke depression, vocational rehabilitation, and tailored programs for encouraging physical activity may be needed to improve the HRQoL in Korean stroke survivors.

Promoting physical activities is important for medical and functional recovery after stroke. Therefore, an accurate and convenient measurement of physical activities is necessary to provide feedback on functional status and effects of rehabilitative interventions. We assessed the feasibility, reliability, and validity of wearing accelerometers to monitor physical activities of stroke patients by estimating energy expenditure. This was a prospective observational quantitative study conducted in an inpatient rehabilitation unit. Twenty-four patients with subacute stroke were enrolled. They wore accelerometers on wrists and ankles for three consecutive weekdays. The feasibility was evaluated by daily wear-time. The test-retest reliability was determined by intra-class correlation coefficient. The validity was evaluated by comparing accelerometeric data to behavior mappings using Mann-Whitney U test, Spearman’s rho correlation coefficient (r) and Bland-Altman plots. Average wearing time for four accelerometers was 20.99 ± 3.28 hours per day. The 3-day accelerometer recording showed excellent test-retest reliability. For sedentary activities, wrist accelerometers showed higher correlation with direct observation than ankle accelerometers. For light to moderate activities, ankle accelerometers showed higher correlation with direct observation than wrist accelerometers. Overall, combined models of accelerometers showed higher correlation with direct observation than separate ones. Wearing accelerometers for 24 h may be useful for measuring physical activities in subjects with subacute stroke in an inpatient rehabilitation unit.