Health-related quality-of-life measures used in hemodialysis patients in Albania

Background Chronic kidney disease is a growing worldwide public health concern. On the other hand, patients' perception of health is an important outcome measure in the assessment of the influence of chronic disease and received treatment. Interest in measuring health-related quality of life has increased together with an awareness that such humanistic outcomes require valid and reliable measures. The aimed study was to evaluate the health-related quality of life (QoL) and to investigate the relationship between selected demographic and clinical characteristics and Health-related Quality of Life (HRQoL) scores in hemodialysis patients. Methods This survey study was conducted on hemodialysis patients (209 patients) during the periods 2017-2018. The QoL includes 25 questions classified into five dimensions, which are mobility, personal care, common activities, discomfort and pain, anxiety, and depression. P value < .05 was considered statistically significant. Results Overall 209 hemodialysis patients, the mean of the five domains varies from a minimum value of 1.75 +/- 1.06 for personal care to a maximum value of 2.65 +/- 1.44 for anxiety and/or depression. In our study, among hemodialysis patients is seen a significant association scored between the quality of life and demographic variables like age groups (p = 0.034), and gender (p = 0.01) as in the previous studies. The presence of comorbidities was significantly associated with the QOL (p = 0.001). About the questionnaire, "How good or bad your health is today" the average score resulted to be 47.08 +/- 4.5. Conclusion As we saw from the results of this study, a considerable number of the patients live with low income. Age, sex, and comorbidities are dependent factors of HRQoL. Therefore, we suggest that future studies include other factors that will evaluate hemodialysis efficiency and find the association between these and QoL.