Assessment of health-related quality of life in asthmatic patients

Abstract

IntroductionAsthma is a common worldwide, chronic respiratory disease. It has been shown to impair a person’s health-related quality of life (HR-QoL), but the core influencing factors are not fully understood.ObjectivesWe aimed in this study to evaluate QoL of asthmatic patients and its main determinants.MethodsA prospective single center study was held with asthmatics consulting in the Pulmonology Department a public hospital in Tunisia. A complete structured questionnaire concerning socio-demographic and clinical characteristics were determined. The assessment of asthma control during the last 4 weeks was based on the GINA 2022 report criteria. The quality of life was assessed by the Asthma Quality of Life Questionnaire (AQLQ) scale in its validated Arabic version.ResultsA total of 109 asthmatic patients was included. Most of them were female (N= 73, 67%). Twelve (11%) were current or ex-smokers. The majority of patients (N=101, 92.6%) were active. Thirty-nine patients (35.7%) had comordidities. Asthma were controlled in 40.4% of cases.The average of AQLQ was4.9±1.2. The most affected domains were environmental stimuli and symptoms with a mean value of 4.6 ± 1.3 and 5.0± 1.3 respectively.Allergic and uncontrolled asthma and severe disease were significantly associated with the average of AQLQ in the study population with p respectively 0.001, <0.000 and <0.000.Multivariate analysis demonstrated that factors independently associated with the HR-QoL were : the severity of asthma (OR-0.39, IC95% [-0.62,-0.15], p=0.001) and uncontrolled disease (OR=0.59, IC95%,[-0.87,-0.31], p=0.000).ConclusionsThese results suggest that uncontrolled and severe asthma significantly affect health asthma-related quality of life.Disclosure of InterestNone Declared