Comparison of Health Related Quality of Life in a community sample and Renal Replacement Therapy patients

Since, therapeutic programs have important effect on the life of ESRD (End Stage Renal Disease) patients, self-assessment of the patient from his/her health status should become an integrated part of his/her medical care. Hence, evaluation of the quality of life would attain an important stance. The determination of health related quality of life (HRQoL) in each group of patients on renal replacement therapy (RRT) and community sample (CS) group, and comparison of findings between them, comprises the main objective of this study. Farsi version of MOS SF-36 questionnaire, supplemented by 25 specific questions, was used in this study in nine scales. A cross sectional, multicenter study was conducted. In a span of 12 months, 203 consecutive patients were studied. These included 80 renal transplant (RT), 83 Hemodialysis (HD) and 40 continues ambulatory peritoneal dialysis (CAPD) patients. Inclusion criteria consisted of age>16 years and a minimum time from the treatment of 3 months. A stratified sample of 83 persons was recruited from the Grand Tehran's community as controls. Study variables included the questionnaire items, demographic characteristics, lab findings and comorbidity. ANOVA, ANCOVA, Bonferroni multiple comparison with SPSS and SAS packages analyzed data. Quality of life in Pain scale did not show significant difference. HD patients did show significant difference with the other groups in Physical function, Role limitation/Physical problems and Role limitation/Emotional problems scales (P<0.05). In Energy scale HRQoL scores for HD and CAPD groups were more than CS, although, the difference was not significantly important. Variables such as age, sex, education level, marital status, length of treatment, creatinine level, hemodialysis level and comorbidity had positive and negative effects on the HRQoL scores.Overall, comparison of results showed that RT patients, CAPD patients and CS group HRQoL are closed to each other and could be put in one level, but the HRQoL of HD patients are in a lower level. for all scales in the instrument the Quality of life of CS and CAPD groups were close and the quality of life of HD patients was lower than the others.