| dc.description.abstract | This masters thesis presents a systematic review article with an introduction section. The introduction thoroughly describes the methods used, shortly presents the findings, and has a comprehensive discussion of the results. Background: Preventive home visits are offered by a number of municipalities, and the aim is to enable elderly to live in their homes as long as possible. The effect of the visits have been synthesised earlier concerning physical function, admission to institution and death, but not regarding self-rated health and quality of life. Aim: To assess the effect of preventive home visits to elderly on self-rated health and quality of life. Methods: A systematic review of randomized controlled trials is performed. AMED, CENTRAL, Cinahl, EMBASE, MEDLINE and Svemed+ were searched, as well as the reference-lists of other reviews on the topic, and scientists was contacted, to identify potentially relevant studies. Critical appraisal of included studies was done using The Cochrane Collaborations “Risk of bias tool”. The results were summarized in a narrative syntheses and the robustness of the results was assessed using the GRADE-approach. Results: Seven studies met the inclusion criteria. Four studies measured self-rated health, two studies measured quality of life, and one study measured both outcomes. One out of five studies reported a small significant effect on self-rated health, and one out of three studies has a small significant effect on quality of life. Both studies showing positive effect used a multidisciplinary team that had received specially training, as visitors. None of the included studies had serious risks of bias, but the quality of the evidence is low. Conclusion: There is little evidence supporting an effect of preventive home visits, but the true effect may be different. | en_US |
