38. Caregiver post‐bereavement general health, pain, social and physical dimensions of quality of life: home palliative care versus usual care.

Study	Measure	Analysis	Follow‐up	Significance and direction	Details
Jordhøy 2000 Norway (high quality)   and   Ahlner‐Elmqvist 2008 Sweden	SF‐36 6 subscales: physical functioning (10 items), social functioning (2 items) role limitation due to physical problems (4 items), bodily pain (2 items), vitality (4 items), and general health perception (5 items) transformed scores: from 0 to 100; higher scores equal better health; caregiver report	Backwards from death	44 to 13 months	Physical functioning subscale group main effect: favours intervention b 5.47 SE 2.55 P value < 0.05 group by time interaction: marginally significant difference favouring intervention P value < 0.10 and ≥ 0.05   Other 5 subscales group effect and group by time interaction n.s. P value ≥ 0.10	Pooled analysis of data from the 2 studies (n = 517); longitudinal analysis of trajectories included pre‐ and post‐bereavement measurements   b values and SEs for each time interval (in group by time analysis) and graphs with descriptive data on trajectories in scores over time provided in Ringdal 2004 (Jordhøy 2000; Ahlner‐Elmqvist 2008)
			12 to 6 months
			5 to 0 months
		Forwards from death	1 to 2 months
			3 to 5 months
			6 to 12 months
			13 to 17 months
Grande 1999 UK	SF‐36 physical component summary scores   score: range not stated; higher scores equal better outcome; caregiver report	Forwards from death	6 months	n.s.	Intervention (n = 73): M 45.5 (SD 13.4) Control (n = 16): M 43.6 (SD 13.8)   Comparisons of scores of people who received and did not receive the intervention (27 people in intervention group did not receive the service) showed no differences

b: metric regression coefficient; M: mean; n.s.: non‐significant; SD: standard deviation; SE: standard error.