Publication:

Quality of life and diabetes mellitus among diabetic adult patients in an urban slum area

Background Quality of life studies help us to develop models that tend to improve the overall health status of the patients. The objective was to study effect of diabetes mellitus on quality of life of diabetic adult patients in an urban slum area.

Methods A hospital based cross sectional study was carried out among 64 eligible known cases of diabetes for a period of three months. For recording questions related to quality of life, questionnaire which was validated was used. The data was expressed as mean and standard deviation.

Results The overall quality of life (role limitation due to physical health) was not much affected as the average scores are above 3.5 which indicates “better quality of life”. The quality of life for heavy activities was slightly affected due to diabetes. But the patients were able to do the mild activities compared to heavy physical activities. Diabetes has affected their quality of life. But in terms of fatigue it has not been much affected. Overall the mean of this symptom related quality of life, was better. This may be due to good glycemic control. Comparatively frequent urination bothered the diabetic patients.

Conclusions Diabetes has some impact on the quality of life of patients as seen from the study.