Abstract

YEPES BARRETO, Ismael; LEPESQUEUR GUILLEN, Lourdes  and  CADAVID ASIS, Sergio. Quality Of Life Predictors in Patients with Chronic Liver Disease in Colombia. Rev Col Gastroenterol [online]. 2015, vol.30, n.4, pp.390-398. ISSN 0120-9957.

Quality of life is a concept that reflects the positive and negative aspects of the life of an individual. The impact of physical and mental health on feelings of personal welfare are known as health-related quality of life (HRQOL). Cirrhosis causes a number of symptoms and complications that can have a profound negative impact on HRQOL as fatigue, pruritus, loss of self-esteem or depression, among others. So far there have been few studies in Latin America on HRQOL for patients with liver cirrhosis, (9) and those that exist have not studied its determining factors in our population in any detail. The aim of this study is to identify predictors of quality of life in a cohort of patients with liver cirrhosis in Cartagena, Colombia using Version 2 of the 36-Item Short Form Health Survey (SF-36 V2). Patients and Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted from June 1, 2014 to August 31, 2014. A Spanish language version of the SF-36 V2 survey was used to consecutively evaluate 49 patients with liver cirrhosis.  Epidemiological and clinical information was gathered and analyses were updated at the moment of data entry. Univariate analysis using the t-student test to compare means in the case of dichotomous independent variables and the Pearson correlation coefficient in the case of numerical independent variables was used for initial identification of the determinants of quality of life. The relationship was considered statistically significant at p <0.05. Results: The etiology (viral versus non-viral) was associated with decreased HRQOL in all scales of SF-36 V2 especially in the PF subscale (- 21.2 points; p = 0.017). This was also true in patients with chronic liver disease secondary to NASH in the DC subscales (-6.18; p = 0.44) and VT (-3.7; p = 0.57). Female patients had lower scores in almost all areas (FF, DC, VT, PF, SF, PE, SM, RCF and the RCM). This relationship was statistically significant in the 40% of the scale areas of the survey. The severity of the disease also had a negative impact estimated by the Child-Pugh classification, transient elastography, and albumin. Conclusion: Being female and albumin were the variables that were frequently associated with HRQL in our population. The implementation of comprehensive care programs for patients with advanced chronic liver disease is necessary to reduce the impact of disease on the quality of life of these patients.

Keywords : Liver cirrhosis; Latin America; quality of life.

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