Introduction:
The survival of chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients has increased considerably leading to an increased focus on quality of life (QOL) and its predictors as an integral part of assessing health outcomes of these patients. This study aimed to evaluate QOL in CKD patients and to explore possible correlating and influencing factors.
Methods:
This was a cross-sectional study conducted at the Department of Nephrology, Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences, Patna, India. Data were collected from hospital information system (HIS). WHOQOL-BREF questionnaire was used to assess the QOL. QOL was assessed in physical health, psychological, social relationship and environmental health domains. Patients were grouped into 3 groups: group A, group B, and group C with eGFR range 30-59, 15-29, and <15 ml/min/1.73 m2 respectively. Statistical analysis was performed using IBM SPSS® Statistics, and a p-value less than 0.05 was considered significant.
Results:
The study enrolled total 120 patients of CKD stage 3, 4 and 5ND between January 2023 to August 2024. The mean age of the patients was 51.13 ± 12.06 years, with male to female ratio of 3:1. The number of patients in group A, group B and group C were 59, 38 and 23 respectively. QOL scores of physical health was 50.27±17.95, psychological was 59.89±19.17, social relationship was 47.29±22.94, and environmental was 62.69±17.99. There was statistically non-significant reduction in QOL of physical and psychological health as CKD progressed (as shown in Table 1). The QOL scores of all domains were the lowest in CKD stage 5ND. Anemia (Hb ≤9gm/dl) was significantly associated with low QOL scores over all CKD stages in physical, psychological and environmental domains; while Age >40 years, Ischemic heart disease (IHD), Diabetes mellitus (DM), Mean arterial pressure (MAP) >100 mmHg, Unmarried status and Female gender were associated with low QOL scores of physical health. Patients with graduation and employment had better QOL in all domains.
Table 1: WHOQOL domain scores in different stages of CKD
Conclusions:
Although QOL in CKD patients is compromised over all CKD stages, CKD5 patients were severely affected. Social health was the most affected. Anemia, education, and employment status were found to affect the most domains of QOL. Addressing all these factors may help in improvement of QOL of CKD patients.
I have no potential conflict of interest to disclose.
I did not use generative AI and AI-assisted technologies in the writing process.