| IntroductionHemodialysis is life-long, complex, and costly. The patients are suffering from both the disease itself and the treatment. With the shift of health conception and medical model, it is now widely accepted that reduction in mortality is not only one aspect of outcome of hemodialysis therapy. Quality of life in the patients also becomes a valid marker. Health-related quality of life is a multidimensional, patient-centred concept encompassing physical health and symptoms, functional status, mental well-being and social function. The MOS 36-item Short Form Health Survey is a multipurpose, short questionnaire with only 36 items, which measure eight-scale profile. Physical Function, Role-Physical, and Bodily Pain are due mostly to physical component, Mental Health, Role-Emotional, and Social Functioning are due mostly to mental component. Vitality, General Health, and Social Functioning are due noteworthy to both components. Now, the SF-36 is widely used in western countries as a generic measure of health status. It has proven useful in monitoring population health, estimating the burden of different diseases, monitoring outcomes in clinical practice, and evaluating treatment effects. Compared with other generic questionnaires, the SF-36 is short, easy to administer, reliable, validated, and sensitive. In School of Medicine, Zhejiang University, China, Li Lu and his colleagues have adopted an adaptation procedure that was close to full-scale cultural adaptation process recommended by IQOLA project. The results presented evidences that health concepts expressed by the original U.S. English SF-36 were equally applicable to the general population of China.ObjectivesThe aim of study was to evaluate the reliability and validity of the Chinese version of the SF-36 in a sample of hemodialysis patients with end-stage renal disease. We also assessed quality of life in hemodialysis patients and identified socio-demographic and clinical variables which influence it.MethodsFour hemodialysis centers were sampled among the hospitals in Hangzhou. All hemodialysis patients of sampled centers, aged 16 and older, able to read, treated more than 3 months, without malignant tumor, serious deformity and operation in recent 6 months were qualified respondents. The trained medical students handed the self-administrated questionnaires to the patients in the hospital. In addition to the SF-36, the survey also included the WHOQOL-BREF and the questions on demographic characteristics and clinic data. In a center, the patients self-administrated the SF-36 again after hemodialysis therapy. The items and scales of the questionnaires were scored by the scoring rules.In the properties of the SF-36, two crucial aspects of correctness were reliability, the extent to which measures give consistent or accurate results, and validity, the extent to which the results pertain directly to the desired attribute or characteristic being measured. In this study, reliability was determined by using both the split-half and internal consistent methods. The validity was evaluated by means of content, construct, criterion and responsiveness. Content validity was assessed by convergent and discriminative validity checks. Construct validity was assessed by factor analytic test. Age, marital status, hemoglobin and co-existing diseases were taken as dependent value, while the WHOQOL-BREF and the patients' self-reported quality of life were looked as the criterion. Responsiveness was assessed by comparing the scores for the patients before and after treatment.The quality of life in hemodialysis patients was assessed. The scores of the SF-36 scales were ranging from 0 to 100. Higher scores represented better quality of life. The means and deviations for each of eight scales were calculated by age and gender. The quality of life in hemodialysis patients was compared with that in general population in Hangzhou and congener patients abroad. By a method based on factor analysis, the eight scales can be summarized into physical and mental compone...
|
PDF Full Text Request