Assessing Quality of Life among Patients with Diabetes Mellitus, Hypertension or Both Diseases in Al-Najaf Province /Iraq
Abstract With growing prevalence, diabetes mellitus will be possibly the most principal cause for morbidity and mortality in next years. The predominance of diabetes mellitus has been increased over the last decades, where the occurrence of disease is anticipated to increase to 592 million at 2035. Essential hypertension is chronic non-communicable disease which considered the major risk factor for many diseases. The world health organization estimates that the hypertensive patients will reach 1 billion or more at year 2025. The purpose of insertion of quality of life as indicator for health outcome is due to sensitivity of this measure for patients’ evaluations of their health status after taken treatment and its health outcome. This study is a cross-sectional survey. The total number of participants in this study was 775 individuals which divided into four groups: healthy control group, patients with diabetes mellitus only, hypertension only and patients with both diabetes mellitus and hypertension. The questionnaire used to assess quality of life is Arabic version of (WHOQOL- BRIEF). The mean scores of the four domains of QOL instrument for diabetic, hypertensive and diabetic hypertensive patients were statistically significant lower than corresponding domains of control group. In conclusion, one chronic disease affects quality of life and combination of two chronic diseases affect quality of life to greater extent.