Health-related quality of life in Thai peritoneal dialysis patients

Background: The Thai government has implemented the first peritoneal dialysis (PD) policy to end-stage renal disease (ESRD) patients under the universal health-care coverage in 2008. However, no data on Thai PD patients’ health-related quality of life (HRQOL) was available.

Objectives: We measured the HRQOL of Thai PD patients, to compare it with those of other PD nations, and to assess the relationships between the HRQOL and socio-demographic and clinical data.

Methods: This is a cross-sectional study. About 100 PD patients were randomly selected from 10 hospitals registered with the National Health Security Office. Face-to-face interviews were conducted between October 2008 and February 2009. The face-to-face interview included WHOQOL-BREF, a generic HRQOL measure including four domains: physical, psychological, social, and environmental domains, and ESRD symptoms. Socio-demographic and clinical data was collected from medical records.

Results: Mean age was 42.2±13.8 years; 53% were male. The four domain scores included 13.05±2.34, 13.40±2.67, 13.30±2.95, and 12.52±2.11 for physical, psychological, social, and environmental domains, respectively. The Thai sample had higher physical and psychological domain scores of WHOQOL-BREF than the Taiwanese sample (both p <0.01) but a lower environmental domain score than the Greek sample (p <0.01). No significant differences in social domain scores between the three nations were found. The multivariate regression analyses showed that ESRD symptoms were significantly and negatively associated with the four domains of WHOQOL-BREF (p <0.01 except the social domain p <0.05). The regression model also found that males were negatively associated with the psychological domain (p <0.05).

Conclusion: This Thai PD sample yielded the highest domain scores on the psychological domain, followed by the social, the physical, and the environmental domains, respectively. The Thai PD had comparable HRQOL to other PD nations. ESRD symptoms and males were negatively associated with HRQOL in Thai PD patients