A survey and analysis of quality of life and its affecting factors of elderly patients with rheumatoid arthritis / 中华风湿病学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To explore an effective way to improve the quality of life of elderly rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients by a survey about their present living conditions and analyze the effect of some related factors. Methods This was a descriptive study and convenient sampling survey were adopted. Seventyfive elder patients with RA were investigated with self-developed questionnaire, self-mana-gement scale,family function questionnaire, DAS28, 36 question scale health survey questionnaire (SF-36). The demographic data, elderly RA related knowledge and attitudes, self-management, family function and quality of life were also investigated. Univariate analysis was used to analyze the relationship between the quality of life of elderly RA and the affecting factors. Results The score of SF-36 was (66±12). The SF-36 scores was associated with joint function (r=0.705, P＜0.01 ), and DAS28 (r=-0.712, P＜0.01 ). The SF-36 score was positively associated with the understanding of the deterioration of symptoms, the attitude of patients towards their diseases, satisfactory to the help from their families, the access to medical care and the degree of selfmanagement (r=0.515, 0.485, 0.540, 0.575, 0.545, P＜0.01); while it was negatively associated with the duration of disease course (r=-0.312, P＜0.01 ). In addition, this study also discovered that the quality of life declined with the decline of their economic status, but tended to improve with the increase of education level.Conclusion The life quality of elderly RA patients is not ideal. It is associated with DAS 28 score, the duration of disease course, the understanding of their diseases, the attitude towards their disease, selfmanagement, family support and other facotrs