Predictors of Health Related Quality of Life in Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus Patients

Diabetes is a chronic disease with severe complications and high mortality rate. As a chronic disease, diabetes needs lifelong treatment and its complications have severely affected the patient's Quality of Life (QoL). Living with a chronic illness negatively affects an individual's perception of QoL. QoL impact all aspects of one's everyday lifestyle.

To determine the QoL of patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus. Factors that affect the quality of life of these patients.

This was a cross sectional study on 140 type 2 diabetes mellitus patients, aended the diabetic clinic of a Tertiary care centre in Kerala, South India. Patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus between the age group of 25–75 were included in the study. The QoL of patients were assessed using SF 36V2 questionnaire along with the interview schedule for socio demographic and clinical data. The data were analyzed using appropriate descriptive and inferential statistics using SPSS.

The mean age of subjects was 56+11.6 years and the mean duration of diabetes mellitus was 10.9 ± 8.3 years. 47.9% of patients were overweight and 20.7% were obese. Most of the respondents performed fairly well on the SF 36 V2 quality of life instrument. The present study revealed that the overall health related quality of life was poor in all aspects in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus. The most important predictors of impaired HRQoL were female gender, duration of diabetes, obesity, and exercise and glycemic control.

The findings could have implications for health promotion. QoL was beer in male patients. Duration of diabetes, obesity, lack of exercise and poor glycemic control adversely affect the QoL of patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus. Therefore much aention must be paid to identify and implement appropriate polices for achieving beer management of diabetes mellitus and ultimately improving the QoL of patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus.