Quality Of Life after Vaginal and Cesarean Deliveries Amonga Groupof Egyptian Women

Abstract

The birth of a child may have a major impact on the health-related quality of life (HRQOL) of the new mother. The concept of health-related quality of life (HRQOL) is multidimensional and includes psychosocial, physical and emotional status, as well as patient autonomy, and is applicable to a wide variety of medical conditions.The aim of this study was to evaluate the health-related quality of life (HRQOL) of Egyptian women who had undergone different types of delivery and to identify factors that significantly affect the HRQOL of these women. A comparative cross-sectional retrospective design was used, the data was collected from 300 women (150) study group were approached during their follow up in postpartum period or seeking medical advice in gynecological department in Shatby hospital AlexandriaGovernorate and (150) comparator group selected from the individuals or relatives accompanying women at Shatby Hospital. The two groups were matched in terms of sample size, and age. Quality of life data was collected from both study group and comparative group by using the Arabic version of Short Form Health Survey (SF-36). It includes eight concepts that assess the following general health measures: physical functioning (PF), role limitations due to physical health problems (role-physical, RP), body pain (BP), general health perceptions (GH), vitality (VT), social functioning (SF), role limitation due to emotional problems (role-emotional, RE), and mental health (MH). In addition, demographic data were collected using an interview questionnaire included recording age, educational level, employment status, and number of children and period after delivery.The result revealed that, study group had significantly higher mean scores in the physical functioning, role-physical, vitality, role-emotional and mental health subscales. The greatest differences were observed in mental health (48.96 vs. 45.65) and role- emotional subscales (44.77 vs. 41.01). There were no significant differences observed in mean scores for general health & social functioning subscales. As regarding body pain, delivered women (study group) reported a significantly lower mean score than (Comparator group),there was a correlation between type of delivery and HRQOL. Conclusion:The findings suggest that normal vaginal delivery might lead to a better quality of life especially resulting in a superior physical health. Further prospective studies are needed to further assess the impact of different factors and types of delivery on the quality of life and to overcome the inherent disadvantages associated with backward studies. Keywords:Health-related quality of life, Different types of delivery,identifying factors.