Issues in Cardiovascular NursingHealth-related quality of life and sense of coherence among elderly patients with severe chronic heart failure in comparison with healthy controls*,**
Section snippets
Methods
The study was conducted at the Sahlgrenska University Hospital (SU)/Sahlgrenska, Göteborg, Sweden, which is both a secondary-care and a tertiary hospital. The majority of patients in need of acute hospital care for CHF are treated on internal medicine wards. The study protocol was approved by the Ethics Committee at Sahlgrenska University Hospital. The investigation conforms to the principles outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki.20
The inclusion criteria were as follows: aged 65 years or
Results
Scores from the 8 dimensions of the SF-36 instrument for patients and matched controls are shown in Table II.Instrument (SF-36, Mean ±SD) Patients (n = 92) Controls (n = 92) Difference (Mann-Whitney U test) Physical function 39.9 ± 22.7 69.0 ± 30.1 † Role physical 25.3 ± 33.9 79.6 ± 35.7 † Bodily pain 61.8 ± 31.1 78.4 ± 27.1 * General health 43.8 ± 21.0 75.9 ± 22.3 † Vitality 35.4 ± 23.7 68.3 ± 25.7 † Social function
Discussion
The findings from this study reveal that the patients with CHF had lower levels of health-related QoL scores (SF-36) compared with the healthy control group. On the other hand, they had similarly high scores of SOC.
In this study, the patients scored particularly low on the SF-36 in the physical dimension, such as physical function, role physical, general health, and vitality. It can be seen that people with severe CHF suffer from considerable functional losses. The patients in this study were
Acknowledgements
We appreciate all the help that we received from Lisbeth Carlsson, Rachel Wessby, Ing-Marie Forsell, and all the nurses and physicians at the Department of Medicine at the Sahlgrenska University Hospital.
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This study was supported by grants from the Swedish Medical Research Council (Grant Nos. B 96-27X-11652-01 A, K 97-27X-11652-02BK, K97-27X-11652-02B, and K98-27X-11652-03C) and the Swedish Foundation for Health Care Sciences and Allergy Research.
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Reprint requests: Inger Ekman, RN, PhD, Sahlgrenska academy at Göteborg University, Faculty of Health and Caring Sciences, Institute of Nursing, Billerudsgatan 1, S-416 75 Göteborg, Sweden.