PURPOSE 

Although health-related quality of life in older people is generally assessed by measuring specific domains of health status, such as activities of daily living or pain, the association between health-status measures and patients'perceptions of their quality of life is not clear.

Indeed, it is controversial whether these health-status measures should be considered measures ofquality oflife at all.

Our objective was to determine the association between health-status measures and older patients'perceptions of their global quality of life.

SUBJECTS AND METHODS 

We performed a cross-sectional study of 493 cognitively intact patients 80 years of age and older, interviewed 2 months after a hospitalization.

We measured patients'self-assessed global quality of life and four domains of health status : physical capacity, limitations in performing activities of daily living, psychological distress, and pain.

RESULTS 

Each of the four scales was significantly correlated with patients'global perceptions of their quality of life (P<0.001).

The ability of the health-status scales to discriminate between patients with differing global quality of life was generally good, especially for the physical capacity (c statistic=0.72) and psychological distress scales (c statistic=0.70).

However, for a substantial minority of patients, scores on the health-status scales did not accurately reflect their global quality of life. (...)