Impact of socio-demographic factors on quality of life of primary chronic daily headache patients

Abstract

Primary chronic daily headaches (CDHs) have a considerable negative impact on patients. It leads to poor quality of life (QOL) and diminished ability to function in day-to-day life, in spite of this sufficient work has not been done in this area in India. The purpose of this study was to determine influence of sociodemographic variables on QOL of primary daily headache patients. A prospective study was carried out on 50 consecutive primary CDH patients attending psychiatry and neurology outpatient unit, diagnosed as per IHC 2003 criteria. They were evaluated using a specially designed proforma and QOL was evaluated using the WHOQOL-Brief (Hindi) instrument. Statistical analysis was done on SPSS version 10. Results revealed that old age patients had poor QOL in environmental domain. Female patients had poorer QOL in social relationship and environmental domains. Married patients had poorer QOL in physical, environmental domain, and their total QOL was also poor. There was a significant positive correlation with education status of patients, that is, higher educated patients had better QOL in environmental domain and negative correlation with family size, that is, more the number of family members poorer was the QOL in social relationship domain. Thus, to conclude many sociodemographic factors in the patients suffering from primary CDH have significant negative impact on QOL of patients. Among sociodemographic variables age, gender, marital status, and family size were the important factors that influence QOL of patients.