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Background: Health related quality of life is the patient’s perception on the influence of the disease on their daily life. Poor health related quality of life is associated with increasing number of people who are hospitalized and increasing high mortality rate among patients with heart failure. Chronic heart failure affects health related quality of life by reducing the patient’s capacity to perform daily activities and overall functional capability, despite its influence on the patients’ health only little is known about health related quality of life among patients with heart failure, Tanzania particularly.
Objectives: The purpose of this study was to assess the health related quality of life among patients with chronic heart failure who are cared at Kilimanjaro Christian medical Centre medical outpatient unit.
Methods: Descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted. Adopted Standardized Swahili version of EQ-5D-3L Questionnaire was used to assess heath related quality of life among 66 patients with chronic heart failure who are cared at Kilimanjaro Christian medical Centre Medical outpatient department.
Results: Total of 66 participants were involved in this study and the mean age was 55years (±11.07), a total of 48(72.7%) participants had New York Heart Association (NYHA) class III and IV. The analysis shows that patients with higher NYHA class, low education level, female gender, very advanced age and recurrent admissions, had poor health related quality of life. In additional to that majority (48%) of the participants were overweight and almost all participants had some problems to extreme problems in mobility (80.3%), self-care (60.6%), usual activities (48%), pain/discomfort (63%) and depression/anxiety (72%) dimensions. In addition, hypertension and diabetes were the commonest underlying causes of CHF.
Conclusion: Patients with CHF have considerable problems in dimensions of mobility, self-care, usual activities, pain/discomfort and anxiety which reflect a poor HRQoL. Similarly, the mean scores of EQ VAS further validate the impression that, self-rated health status is poor in this population. |
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