Health-related quality of life in outpatients of a psychosomatic medicine clinic: a pilot survey in Japan.

The objective of this study is to clarify the difference of health-related quality of life (HRQoL) profiles by disease category with the SF-36 questionnaires, and to examine the possibility of application for a longitudinal study. A number of subjects was 536, specifically 127 men and 409 women. For all of the eight domains, Cronbach's alpha exceeded 0.7. Categories in which all of the domains were approximately equal to the national standard included hypertension, neck and shoulders syndrome, diabetes, hyperlipidemia and cardiac disease. Bodily pain was especially lower in gastrointestinal disorder, spondylopathy and hemopathy. Patients with mental disorder had lower scores in all domains. Categories in which 5-7 of the eight domains had lower scores included arthropathy, asthma, chronic hepatitis, autonomic imbalance, 'ovariopathy and hysteropathy' and chronic rheumatism. No significant change was found between the first and second scores in hypertension as a representative of the high HRQoL categories. In mental disorder as a representative of the low HRQoL categories, however, five of the eight domains increased significantly. We concluded that a target disease should be chosen among subjects with low HRQoL scores before an intervention to assess its effectiveness. Or subjects with high HRQoL scores can be examined to determine whether they keep the same level of HRQoL.