Quality of Life in Patients with Chronic Kidney Disease undergoing Maintenance Hemodialysis

Abstract

Introduction: Quality of life (QOL) is an important parameter that needs to be considered when evaluating the experience of patients receiving health care. The study aims to describe the quality of life of patients with Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) under maintenance hemodialysis (MHD).

Materials and methods: The study was descriptive, cross sectional involving 106 CKD patients undergoing maintenance hemodialysis for at least 2 months in the hemodialysis unit of Pokhara Academy of Health Science, Pokhara. Patients undergoing hemodialysis during the data collection period (March 2021 to August 2021) i.e. 106 were taken as sample. Patient aged less than 18 and more than 75 years were excluded. Data was collected by interview technique using SF-36 questionnaire and analyzed via SPSS version 21and p-value<0.05 were considered significant. Independent T-test, one way Anova were used for statistical analysis. The quality of life was determined by Physical Component Summary (PCS), Mental Component Summary (MCS) and overall quality of life.

Results: The overall quality of life was slightly above the average and physical component summary was better than mental component summary. The finding shows that there is statistically significant difference in age (p<0.001), marital status (p=0.002), duration of hemodialysis (p<0.001) and education status (p<0.001) with quality of life.

Conclusion: It was concluded that the overall quality of life was slightly above the average and physical component summary was better than mental component summary in the studied population.