Correlation between the Characteristics and Quality of Life of Hypertensive Outpatients at a Private Hospital in Yogyakarta

Abstract

Many factors can affect a person’s quality of life, including therapy with antihypertensive drugs that often have uncomfortable side effects and lead to decreased quality of life. This study aimed to determine the statistical relationship between the characteristics and quality of life of hypertensive outpatients at a private hospital in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. This cross-sectional study used the EQ5D questionnaire to measure the quality of life of 56 respondents, who had met the inclusion criteria, after three months of antihypertensive therapy. The data were processed by scoring the questionnaire items and then converting the EQ5D dimensions to EQ5D Index based on the Malaysian value set. The data analysis also included descriptive statistics andchi-square test. The results showed that the quality of life, as represented by the EQ-5D index, ranged from 0.375 (lowest) to 0.933 (highest). The severe problems in the quality of life were identified in three dimensions, namely anxiety/ depression (7.14%), pain/discomfort (5.36%), and usual activities (3.57%). Meanwhile, difficulties were not found in the other two dimensions, namely self-care (89.29%) and mobility (55.36%). The results showed that the patients’ characteristics, namely sex, age, employment, education, and complication, correlated with quality of life at different levels (p-values), i.e., 0.350, 0.418, 0.992, 0.726, and 0.099, respectively. As a conclusion, there is no significant relationship between patients’ characteristics and quality of life (p-values> 0.05). Keywords—characteristics, quality of life, hypertensive, outpatient.