Comparison of quality of life in Parkinson's patients with and without fatigue

Introduction: Quality of life in patients with chronic diseases and its evaluation is important for suitable intervention actions. This study is designed to evaluate and compare quality of life in patients with and without fatique. Methods: This is an analytic study. 108 referential patients with Parkinson's disease in Shiraz Motahari clinic, participated in this study. Fatigue was measured by fatigue severity Scale (FSS), quality of life by the PDQL and (SF-36) tools. Hohen & Yahr index for assessing the severity and stage of disease were used. Data was analyzed by SPSS software and Chi square, t test, Mann-Whitney and Spearman correlation coefficient. Results: 67 (62%) of the patient were men and 41 (38%) women. Most of the patients (38.9%) were in the second stage and Mean±SD age of the patients was 64/49 ± 11/73. 36 (33/33%) persons had symptoms of fatigue, 72 (66.66%) had no symptoms of fatigue. Patients with higher severity of fatigue were more suffering from disease and stage of their disease was higher. Quality of life score obtained with both PDQL and SF-36 had significance difference in both groups of the patients (P<0.05). Quality of life and fatigue showed a significant inverse correlation in all dimensions of the two questionnaires (P<0.05). Conclusion: The results showed that quality of life in patients with symptoms of fatigue is significantly lower than patients without symptoms of fatigue. More effort is necessary to improve quality of life of these patients.