The Relationship between Quality of Life and Social Support in People with Diabetes with Lower Limb Amputation

Diabetes mellitus (DM) is the most common metabolic disorder. The improvement of the quality of life (QoL) of people with DM is one of the goals in most health systems. This study was conducted to investigate the relationship between the QoL and social support in these individuals.

Forty people with diabetes with lower limb amputation participated in this descriptive cross-sectional study. For data collection, the multidimensional scale of perceived social support (MSPSS), medical outcome study-social support survey (MOS-SSS), the diabetes quality of life (DQoL), and demographic questionnaires were used.To examine the relationships between the variables, an independent t-test, Pearson correlation coefficient, Spearman’s correlation coefficient, and multivariate analysis were performed by SPSS software, version 22.

In this study, 56% of the participants (22 people) were male and the rest were female. The results of the linear regression analysis showed that there was a significant and direct relationship between QoL and social support resources (P=0.002, β=0.514) and dimensions (P=0.01, β=0.458). QoL was significantly correlated with marital status (P=0.015) and economic status (P=0.046).

Increased social support enhances QoL in people with diabetes with lower limb amputation. Therefore, planning to improve social support is highly important in improving the QoL in these people.