Understanding Health Related Quality of Life in Hypertensive Patients: Interrogating Effect of Psychological and Environmental Factors

Background: Health-related quality of life has become an important aspect in the field of healthcare as an important outcome measure for chronic diseases like hypertension. Improvement in HRQoL have become a focal point in health research, with clinicians, scientists and policy makers realizing the value of individual’s self-rated experience, beyond or in addition to objective and clinical measure of health. Aim: To study the effect of psychological and environmental factors on HRQoL in patients suffering from hypertension using WHOQOL-BREF questionnaire. Methods and Materials: The study was carried out for six weeks in medicine outpatient and inpatient department of a tertiary care hospital. All patients diagnosed with essential hypertension were recruited and socio-demographic and clinical data were noted. Patients were interviewed using WHOQOL-BREF using questionnaire. Results: Of total 100 patients, female was more prevalent to hypertension compared to male. Mean score of environmental domain was greater than the psychological domain [72.375 (SD ±19.23) and 68.91667 (SD ± 19.59), respectively] suggesting the inverse correlation of quality of life with negative thoughts, blue mood, anxiety and depression. Regarding individual questions, most of the participants felt safe in their daily life, were satisfied with their physical environment and condition of living place with a mean score of 4.58 (SD±0.55), 4.03 (SD±0.69) and 4.24 (SD±0.66), respectively. In contrary, majority of study participants often had negative feelings such as blue mood, anxiety, despair and depression [2.86 (SD±0.96)], were dissatisfied with their transport [3.5 (SD±0.85)] and lacked opportunity for leisure activities [3.57 (SD±0.85)] thus indicating poor quality of life as mean values were low. Conclusion: Female gender, older age, negative feelings, co-morbid condition and level of education may be important predictors of QOL in hypertensive patients.