Socio-demographic Factors Affecting Health-related-quality of Life in Post-renal-transplant Patients

Objective: The objective of this study was to identify the socio-demographic factors affecting health related quality of life in renal transplant recipients. Material and Methods: A census of all registered post-renal-transplant patients was conducted from October 1, 2018, to January 31, 2019. Data were collected on a Kidney Disease Quality of Life questionnaire (SF-1.3) and analysed by Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS). Scores in the three main domains, physical component summary (PCS), mental component summary (MCS), and kidney disease component summary, were calculated. Mean scores for gender, type of donor, and employment were compared by unpaired t-test, while mean scores for age, level of education, and duration of transplant were compared by analysis of variance. Results: Out of 315 patients, 277 (87.9%) were males and 38 (12.1%) were females. The mean age was 37.26 (±10.14) years. Live unrelated transplants were 58.41% while live related transplants were 41.58%. Males had a significantly higher average (p-value=0.001) PCS score, but females had significantly higher average (p-value=0.05) MCS score. There was variation with respect to the PCS (p-value=0.031) and MCS (p-value=0.001) scores in the different age categories. The education groups varied significantly with respect to MCS (p-value=0.05). The recipients of live unrelated transplants had significantly lower average PCS score. Conclusion: The female gender, live related donor and variations in ages were associated with lower PCS scores, while male gender, variations in ages, and education were associated with lower MCS scores. This study demonstrates that the Kidney Disease Quality of Life Short Form-1.3 (KDQOL SF-1.3) is a good tool to reveal differences in HRQOL scores in renal transplant recipients.