Predictors for health related quality of life in persons 65 years or older with chronic heart failure.

BACKGROUND

A main goal in nursing care of persons with chronic heart failure (HF) is to strengthen their health related quality of life (HRQoL). This presupposes knowledge about the relation between heart failure and HRQoL. Existing studies have shown incongruent results about whether HRQoL is affected differently depending on age or sex of elderly persons with chronic HF.

AIM

This study aimed to investigate if age, sex, disease severity, comorbidity and living conditions predict health related quality of life among persons 65 years or older with chronic HF.

METHODS

The study included a sample of 357 persons. HRQoL was measured by the Minnesota Living with Heart Failure Questionnaire and the Short Form-12 Health Survey Questionnaire. Multiple regression analyses were performed to analyse the relation between the predictors and HRQoL.

RESULTS

The main finding was that self-rated disease severity was strongly associated with HRQoL, but also age, sex, diabetes and respiratory diseases was associated with some of the dimensions of HRQoL.

CONCLUSIONS

Interventions aimed at delaying the progress of the disease, assist persons' to cope with the disease and maintain the domains of HRQoL that are still feasible could be important to improve HRQoL in elderly persons with chronic HF.