Quality of Life in Peritoneal Dialysis Patients : The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease (original) (raw)
Article: PDF Only
STEELE, THOMAS E. M.D.1; BALTIMORE, DIANE M.S.W.2; FINKELSTEIN, SUSAN H. M.S.W.2.3; JUERGENSEN, PETER P.A.2; KLIGER, ALAN S. M.D.2, 4; FINKELSTEIN, FREDRIC O. M.D.2, 4
1 Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Medical University of South Carolina. Send reprint requests to Dr. Steele, 171 Ashley Avenue, Charleston, South Carolina 29425.
2 New Haven CAPD, New Haven, Connecticut.
3 Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut.
4 Department of Medicine, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut.
Abstract
In 49 patients receiving continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis, we assessed the relative influences of adequacy of dialysis (assessed by kinetic transfer/volume urea) and psychological symptoms (depression and anxiety) upon the patients' evaluation of their overall quality of life (QoL). Subjects completed self-rating forms for anxiety, depressive, and somatic symptoms, for discrete areas relevant to QoL, and for overall QoL; clinicians also rated QoL. Depressive symptoms proved a much stronger correlate of overall QoL than did the biochemical measure of dialysis adequacy, and they remained influential even after adjustment for anxiety, kinetic transfer/volume, and somatic symptoms. In contrast, the effects of kinetic transfer/volume, anxiety symptoms, and somatic symptoms dropped sharply when adjusted for the other variables. Because psychological (especially depressive) symptoms may be stronger determinants of patients' overall QoL than is adequacy of dialysis, assessing QoL and psychological status should be part of the care of end-stage renal disease patients.
© Williams & Wilkins 1996. All Rights Reserved.