| Identifying
ways to measure quality of life in frail elderly
For Dr. Gary Naglie, it was a distinct honour to look
after a 103-year-old patient. "Being able to converse
with someone who's experienced that much life is a gift,"
says Dr. Naglie, clinical researcher at Toronto Rehab.
"I appreciate the chance to know someone who's
seen society evolve from the horse and buggy era to
the modern age."
Dr. Naglie's research looks at outcomes in frail older
populations such as elderly people with hip fractures,
dementia or on dialysis. His focus has been on evaluating
programs and interventions for these people and trying
to establish what outcomes to measure in order to assess
how effective therapy is.
"I'm particularly interested in quality of life.
We're doing a major study on quality of life in Alzheimer's
disease, trying to assess a variety of measures. We
also want to compare patients' own rating of their quality
of life with those of caregivers and to evaluate how
quality of life in Alzheimer's patients changes over
time."
Measuring quality of life can be controversial. Dr.
Naglie's study will use a variety of different measures
to try and provide greater insights into quality of
life in this patient population.
"A pilot study we did suggested patients with
mild to moderate dementia reliably provide information
about their own quality of life," says Dr. Naglie.
"And, generally speaking, patients rated their
quality of life much higher than their caregivers did.
That raises interesting clinical and research issues
about how to measure quality of life and how to interpret
those measurements."
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Dr. Gary Naglie |
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Quick
Biography
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Dr. Naglie is a clinical researcher in geriatric
medicine at Toronto Rehab. He holds the Mary Trimmer
Chair in Geriatric Medicine Research from the
University of Toronto. Associate Professor in
the Departments of Medicine and Health Policy,
Management and Evaluation at the University of
Toronto, he is a geriatrician at University Health
Network and senior scientist at Toronto General
Research Institute. His research centres on outcomes
in the frail elderly, including quality of life
assessment and cost-effectiveness analysis of
interventions for older persons. He has expertise
in drug policy and evaluation. Dr. Naglie has
published and lectured extensively on geriatric
medicine. He has an MD from McGill University
and did postgraduate training at the University
of Toronto and McMaster University.
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