A Relationship Between Home Oxygen Therapy Compliance And Quality Of Life Of The Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease Patients

Objective:To assess the level of quality of life and home oxygen therapy compliance of the patients with COPD, and analyse the relationship between home oxygen therapy compliance and quality of life of the patients with COPD.Method:A cross-sectional survey was used in this study. Three hundred and twenty-four COPD patients were conducted in the study by convenience sampling. All the patients who diagnosed as COPD and met the inclusion criteria, came from the People's Hospital of Hunan from January,2007 to December,2007. Four instuments were used for data collection:Individual Information Sheet was used to collect the subjects' demographic information, a self-designed Home Oxygen Therapy Compliance Questionnaire to assess the subjects'treatment compliance, Medical Outcome Health Survey Questionnaire (SF-36) and Respiratory Disease Questionnaire (AQ20) were used to assess the level of the quality of life and impact of COPD respectively. The Statistical Package for Social Science SPSS13.0was used for the descriptive analysis of t-test, non-parameter Mann-Whitney U test and Pearson correlation analysis.Results:(1) Home Oxygen Therapy Compliance Questionnaire reliability tests showed Cronbach'a coefficient=0.984, validity x2/df= 2.97, GFI value=0.836, which showed the scale has good reliability and construct validity. (2) Fourty-three point eight percent of the COPD patients having lower scores (<40) of Home Oxygen Therapy Compliance, only 21.3% of the COPD patients having higher scores of compliance. (3) The scores of AQ20 showed that 78.1% of COPD patients with poor quality of life. The scores of SF-36 showed the significantly lower in the every dimensions in the SF-36, which is the biggest decline in physiological function, account for 50.3%. (4) The scores of SF-36 were significantly positively associated with the scores of Home Oxygen Therapy Compliance, the absolute value of correlation coefficient from 0.774 to 1.000. In addition, the use of independent samples t test showed that the high compliance of home oxygen therapy group AQ20 score was significantly lower than the low compliance group (t= 26.92, p<0.05); using non-parametric Mann-Whitney U test showed that the level of compliance group Two samples of each SF-36 scale scores showed significant differences (p<0.05), high-compliance group was significantly higher than the quality of life of low compliance group. This shows that the high compliance group home oxygen therapy was significantly higher than the low quality of life compliance group.Conclusion:(1)Most COPD patients had poor home oxygen therapy Compliance. (2) Most COPD patients with home oxygen therapy reduced the quality of life in general, especially in physical function decreased significantly. (3) There was a positive relationship between quality ot llife and home oxygen therapy Oxygen compliance among the COPD patients with home oxygen therapy, indicating that improving home oxygen therapy compliance might be improve the quality of life in COPD patients.(4)The self-developed Home Oxygen Therapy Questionnaire has good reliability and validity, can be used as assessment of home oxygen therapy compliance in COPD patients effectivly. (5) SF-36 scale for home oxygen therapy in this study patients with COPD, the scale of the dimension of the internal consistency reliability coefficient of over 0.7, indicating that the scale item internal consistency of each dimension than satisfied; and the SF-36 scale scores of the dimensions and AQ20 scale showed a significant negative correlation, indicating that the SF-36 for quality of life in COPD patients is acceptable.