Objective: The present study was designed to assess HRQoL and depression among patients of liver cirrhosis in Pakistan.
Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study design was used to assess health-related quality of life and depression among liver cirrhosis patients in Pakistan. Two pre-validated questionnaires i.e. SF 36 and HADS were self-administered to a sample of 382 cirrhotic patient’s selected using convenience sampling technique for measuring HRQoL and depression, respectively. After data collection, data was cleaned, coded and analyzed using in SPSS version 21.
Results: The results highlighted that lowest scores for HRQoL were observed in the domain of role physical (40.02,±24.01) followed by role emotional (41.93,±26.99) whereas the highest scores were observed in the domain of physical functioning (51.87,±15.22).
Conclusion: The results of the present study concluded that liver cirrhosis patients in Pakistan had poor HRQoL across all domains along with mild to moderate depression. While all domains were affected, the greatest impact was on role limitation due to physical as well as emotional problems. The most affected group among patients were females and patients having age greater than 60 y. Besides this severity and advanced stage of cirrhosis had a negative effect on all domains of HRQoL. Presence of complications further reduced HRQoL and increased depressive symptoms among liver cirrhosis patients
