Quality of Life in Diabetic Patients: A Case-Control Study

Objective: Quality of life (QOL) is an intellectual concept consisting of positive and negative aspects of an individual’s life and indeed it demonstrates the method by which a person perceives the health condition as well as the other aspects of his/her life and reacts to them. Currently, assessment of QOL is more considered because of the increased prevalence of chronic diseases. So, the current study was conducted to assess the QOL in type 2 diabetic patients compared to non-diabetic subjects. Materials and Methods: A case-control study was conducted in Yazd Health Monitoring Research Center on 50 diabetic patients and 50 healthy people in March2014.The data collection instrument had two parts: 1-demographic and disease related check list 2- Persian validated and reliable version of SF-36.Descriptive and multivariate statistics were done with the statistical software SPSS-17 (Chicago, IL, US) Results: 50 participants were included in case and control groups. Fifty percent of patients were female and most of them (42%) were between 41-60 years old. The mean ± standard deviation of quality of life score in cases and controls were 54.95±13.17 and 68.87±28.57 respectively. The mean of quality of life score in physical functioning, vitality, role emotional, social functioning and bodily pain domains were significantly different between case and control groups. Conclusion: Our study showed lower levels of QOL in diabetic patients in comparison with control group. This is in agreement with previous studies and may be related to complications of DM, or numerous problems which diabetic patients encounter. Improving of QOL by appropriate education and follow-up must be emphasized to the management of diabetic patients.