Quality of life in Wilson's disease.

BACKGROUND

Assessment of Quality of life (QoL) is fast assuming significance as the measure of health in many disorders.

AIM

To correlate clinical severity and QoL in patients with Wilson's disease (WD).

MATERIALS AND METHODS

We evaluated patients of WD on regular follow up for at least two years and aged over 18 years using Neurological Symptom Score (NSS) for clinical severity and WHO-BREF for QoL at a university teaching hospital. Patients with inability to respond to the questionnaire due to behavioral problems, low IQ or other disease related factors were excluded. These 30 patients (M:F:: 23:7) had a mean age of 27.97 +/- 11.16 years at evaluation and the mean duration of treatment of 9.2 +/- 6.4 years.

RESULTS

All four domains of WHO-QoL-BREF viz., Physical, Psychological, Social and Environmental correlated well with each other (p < 0.01). The NSS correlated inversely with the physical domain (p < 0.02), while the duration of treatment had a positive correlation with the physical domain (p < 0.01). None of the other features of QoL showed any significant correlation with age, NSS or duration of treatment.

CONCLUSION

QoL is complementary to formal neurological assessment and should be routinely incorporated in the evaluation of outcome of patients with WD and other chronic neurological disorders.