[Evaluation of health-related quality of life in dialysis patients. Personal experience using questionnaire SF-36]

Abstract

Introduction: Patients' perception of health is an important outcome measure in the assessment of influence of chronic disease and received treatment. The purpose of this study was: 1) to investigate the relation between selected demographic and clinical characteristics and Health-related Quality of Life (HRQoL) scores in patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) who receive dialysis, 2) to compare HRQoL in dialysis patients with their peers from the control group, 3) to evaluate the usefulness of SF-36 questionnaire.

Material and methods: We evaluated Health-Realated Quality of Life (HRQoL) of dialysis patients by the Polish version of the Short Form 36 Items Health Survey (SF-36). The SF-36 consists of eight scales: physical functioning (PF), social functioning (SF), role limitation attributable to physical problems (RP), role limitation attributable to emotional problems (RE), mental health (MH), vitality (VT), bodily pain (BP) and general health perception (GH). This study included 97 patients (44 men and 53 women), aged 28-86 years (mean age: 57.2) treated with HD (n = 77) and CAPD (n = 20) for 3-245 months (mean: 61 months). We compared the results with the data obtained from 217 healthy control subjects (105 men and 112 women), aged 20-92 years (mean age 51.1). The patients were divided into four age-groups and compared with the appropriate groups of controls.

Results: The perception of health of dialysis patients was worse than that of controls. We have found, that in the group aged over 65 years patients' scores were quite close to those of the control population. Our results show the following patient-connected factors to be independently associated with quality of life (QoL): age, sex, occupation, level of education, family situation and comorbidities. On average, females reported lower scores; the impact of ageing was more evident in physical scales.

Conclusions: 1) age, sex, occupation, level of education, family situation as well as comorbidities are independent factors of HRQoL, 2) subjective QoL of elderly patients seems acceptable in comparison with healthier peers, 3) the SF-36 questionnaire is applicable in dialysis patients and SF-36 scores are related to important clinical aspects.