Assessing the outcome of rehabilitation in patients with end-stage renal disease.

Assessing the rehabilitative/restorative process requires the definition of desired outcome. Traditionally, medicine has defined the desired outcome of treatment as curing disease. End-stage renal disease (ESRD) cannot be cured by applying current biotechnology. Thus, to assess treatment interventions in patients with ESRD, the desired outcome must be expanded to incorporate the broader components of health, which include physical, mental, and social well-being or quality of life. Based on this expanded definition of health, desirable treatment outcomes in patients with ESRD include employment of those able to work, individual control over the effects of kidney disease and dialysis, enhanced fitness, improved communications with caregivers and family, improved compliance with the dialysis regimen, and resumption of many activities enjoyed before the initiation of dialysis. Broadening the definition of desired outcome requires new measurement techniques. Measurement instruments for health status must evaluate fixed disease, which imposes certain limits on expected outcome; mutable health status, which represents the focus of intervention; and factors unrelated to healthcare, which will modify the scope of intervention that can be prescribed. Health-care status involves both self-reported evaluation and physical assessment. The reporting forms should be comprehensive, convenient, controlled, and valid. Such forms can be targeted to gain information about the natural evolution of a disease or disability process, to evaluate the effectiveness of treatment or other intervention on altering the disease or disability outcome, and to measure the quality of care. Two examples of the application of health status assessment will be reviewed.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)