Health-related quality of life among thalassemia patients in Bangladesh using the SF-36 questionnaire

Abstract

Thalassemia is one of the most common autosomal recessive hereditary blood disorders worldwide, especially in developing countries, including Bangladesh. Thus, this study aimed to determine HRQoL and its determinants of thalassemia patients (TP) in Bangladesh. A cross-sectional survey was performed on 356 randomly selected thalassemia patients. Participants were invited to face-to-face interviews. Descriptive statistics (frequencies and percentages), independent t-test, ANOVA, and multivariate (linear and logistic regression) analysis was performed to analyze the data. Our demographic data showed that among 356 patients, 54% and 46% were male and female, respectively, with an average age of 19.75 (SD = 8.02) years. Most were transfusion-dependent (91%), 26% had comorbidities, and 52% were from low-income families. In the case of HRQoL, male patients showed significantly higher scores of bodily pains and physical health summaries than female patients. Lower income, high blood transfusion status, disease severity, comorbidities, and medical expenses (p < 0.05; CI 95%) are significantly associated with lower SF-36 scores. This study found an association between lower income, blood transfusion, disease severity, comorbidities, as well as medical expenses, and the deterioration of HRQoL among TP. Male patients experienced poorer HRQoL than females. National action plans are required to guarantee the holistic welfare of thalassemia patients.

Gender Disparities in Psychological Disturbances and Quality of Life Among Adolescent and Adult Patients with Thalassemia: A Review

“…Females tend to report lower health-related QoL scores than males. 30 , 34 , 38 , 42 In addition, females may be more willing to discuss symptoms and reporting of health-related QoL than males. 26 Females without social support who are exposed to life events are more vulnerable than males.…”

A Cross-Sectional, Multicentric, Disease-Specific, Health-Related Quality of Life Study in Greek Transfusion Dependent Thalassemia Patients

“…A recent survey in Saudi Arabia was among the few studies reporting that TDT participants holding professional jobs had better mental HRQoL scores compared to those engaged in clerical or manual occupations [ 45 ]. Similarly, another survey in Bangladesh demonstrated that lower income was associated with a deterioration of HRQoL [ 46 ]. It is important to note that employment rates for TDT patients vary across countries.…”

“…There is no consensus in the literature regarding the effect of gender on HRQoL in TDT. Sobota et al reported that female patients in the USA had worse HRQoL [ 15 ], whereas studies in Iran and Bangladesh demonstrated that female patients had a better quality of life [ 39 , 46 , 48 ]. It could be speculated that the differences in cultural and social environments between countries may explain the contradictory effect of gender on HRQoL.…”

Delving into Causal Discovery in Health-Related Quality of Life Questionnaires

“…There are multiple examples in the literature where HRQoL questionnaires have been employed. For example, EQ-5D-5L has been employed by the authors of [17][18][19][20], SF-36 by [21][22][23][24], WHOQOL-BREF by [25][26][27], EORTC QLQ-C30 by [28][29][30][31], QLQ-CLL17 by [31], and FACT-based questionnaires by [32][33][34][35][36]. The analysis of HRQoL data is most frequently based on descriptive statistics, standard correlation analysis, and inferential statistics (see, e.g., [37]).…”

“…For instance, the correlation (Pearson, Spearman) between HRQoL scores and demographic, clinical, biological, and other parameters was assessed by the authors of [18,23,[25][26][27]29,35,36]. HRQoL scores were compared either among different subgroups of patients [17,18,21,22,24,30,32] or between the subgroups of patients and controls [20,22,23,25,27,31]. Regression models have also been used to assess the correlation of HRQoL scores with various participants' characteristics (e.g., [18,19,21,24,27,30]).…”