Quality of life in patients of specialized cardiology unit

Abstract

The existing methods of evaluation of the state of a patient do not account for all variables in their life. This creates a need to establish a complex approach in assessing a patient’s condition, including the integral criterion of their subjective state, the quality of life (QL): physical, social and societal well-being. The evaluation is done using certain surveys. Despite a significant amount of research on the quality of life of patients with cardiovascular disease, the understanding of the link between the illness and factors such as age, sex, diagnosis, and its distinctive features remains vague. The objective of the study is to assess the quality of life of hospitalized patients with cardiovascular disease, depending on their age, sex and diagnosis. 115 hospitalized cardiology patients (59 men and 56 women) were surveyed in the cardiology department of Vinnytsia Regional Clinical Hospital named after Pirogov. The mean age of the surveyed amounted to 57.71±1.32 years. 78 patients were diagnosed with different forms of coronary heart disease (II, III, IV classes of angina, atherosclerotic and postinfarction cardiosclerosis, cardiac arrhythmia and disturbances of impulse conduction), mostly in combination with stage II-III of essential hypertension (EH). Stage II EH without CHD was observed in 17 patients, while 20 patients suffered from different cardiovascular illnesses (myocarditis, pericarditis, cardiomyopathies, heart defects). The control group comprised of 30 healthy individuals with no evident cardiac pathology (17 men and 13 women), the mean age of whom amounted to 43.26±15.01 years. To evaluate the quality of life, the MOS-SF-36 guestionnaire has been used, which consists of eight sections, each scaled on 0-100. The higher the score was, the better the state of health was. The validity of the results was determined by employing analysis of variance, namely Student’s T-Test. A reliable decrease in the quality of life in all sections of the SF-36 Survey has been found as well as the difference in gender, age, diagnosis, and its distinctive features. The figures of the quality of life during a cardiac disease could be additional informative characteristics that should be used for a better assessment of the health state of the patients and solutions for the efficacy of their treatment.