[Quality of life of Crohn's disease patients]

Abstract

Background: The assessment of the quality of life in chronic diseases has started to move from clinical studies to practice. The main goal of the project was to assess the quality of life of Crohn's disease patients from two Czech centres by means of Czech versions of the general World Health Organization Quality of Life--BREF and specific Inflammatory Bowel Disease Questionnaire, to compare the quality of life of patients with an active disease and those in remission and to compare the quality of life with the general Czech population.

Methods and results: 103 patients with Crohn's disease underwent a survey performed by means of two Czech versions of quality of life questionnaire. The dataset consisted of 53 men and 50 women; the average age of patients was 42 years. Increased activity was observed in 45 patients; 58 patients were in remission. By means of WHOQOL-BREF, we found the average global score of quality of life and satisfaction with health in our group to be 3.5 (Czech standard 3.8) and 2.8 (Czech standard 3.7), respectively. The results were compared to the Czech standards. A negative influence of disease activity was statistically significant (p < 0.001) in all domains using either of the two questionnaires. Clinical factors such as the use of corticosteroids or immunosuppressives, and the history of surgery influenced some domains.

Conclusions: The results from our study indicate that the disease activity may have a significant impact on the quality of life in Crohn's disease patients. A combination of the general and specific questionnaire may identify factors that would otherwise remain unappreciated properly. The quality of life of patients in remission was comparable to that of the general Czech population.