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NDT Advance Access published online on July 5, 2005
Nephrology Dialysis Transplantation, doi:10.1093/ndt/gfh965
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© The Author [2005]. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of ERA-EDTA. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oupjournals.org
Received November 7, 2004
Accepted May 25, 2005

Original Articles

Do dialysis- and transplantation-related medical factors affect perceived health status?

Jaroslav Rosenberger 1*, Jitse P. van Dijk 2, Iveta Nagyova 3, Robert Roland 4, Andrea Madarasova Geckova 3, Wim J. A. van den Heuvel 5, and Johan W. Groothoff 6

1 Transplantation Department, University Hospital of L. Pasteur, Kosice, Slovak Republic; Institute of Social Sciences and Kosice Institute for Society and Health, Faculty of Science, University of P. J. Safárik, Kosice, Slovak Republic
2 Institute of Social Sciences and Kosice Institute for Society and Health, Faculty of Science, University of P. J. Safárik, Kosice, Slovak Republic; Department of Social Medicine, University of Groningen Medical Center, Groningen, The Netherlands
3 Institute of Social Sciences and Kosice Institute for Society and Health, Faculty of Science, University of P. J. Safárik, Kosice, Slovak Republic
4 Transplantation Department, University Hospital of L. Pasteur, Kosice, Slovak Republic
5 Institute for Rehabilitation Research, Hoensbroek, The Netherlands; University of Maastricht, The Netherlands
6 Department of Social Medicine, University of Groningen Medical Center, Groningen, The Netherlands

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
Jaroslav Rosenberger, E-mail: rosenberger_jaro{at}hotmail.com



  Abstract

Background. Quality of life and perceived health status (PHS) are important indicators of patient care together with morbidity, mortality and health-care resource utilization. The aim of this study is to explore how various medical conditions might influence perceived health status.

Methods. The study sample consisted of 128 kidney transplant recipients. PHS was measured using the self-administered SF-36 questionnaire. Stepwise linear regression analysis of 17 demographic, dialysis-, transplantation- and co-morbidity-related factors was performed in order to explore predictors of worse PHS.

Results. Older age, female gender, lower education, increased number of hospitalizations during the dialysis period and diabetes mellitus were identified as significant predictors of worse PHS. Age was the most important predictor of PHS, explaining 23.3% of variance in the SF-36 physical component and 4.4% in the SF-36 mental component. Between age groups, major differences were found in predictors of perceived health status--serum creatinine was the most important for patients younger than 45 years and the number of hospitalizations for patients of 45 years and over.

Conclusions. Biological and medical factors are significant predictors of the physical component of PHS, although they can explain only up to one-third of its variance. Other dimensions of PHS are weakly influenced by these medical parameters. It seems important to evaluate perceived health status separately among the age groups because they differ in their predictors.

Keywords: co-morbidity; health-related quality of life; health status; kidney transplantation; quality of life.
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