Last update:
02-Mar-2020

OBJECTIVE To assess the quality of life in patients with peripheral arterial disease and investigate its relationship with demographic and clinical characteristics.

METHOD A cross-sectional study was conducted in a public general hospital in Athens. The study population included 124 patients with chronic peripheral arterial disease of the lower extremities. Quality of life was measured with the SF-36 questionnaire. Data collection was performed from January to June 2019. Elimination of confounders was performed using multivariate regression models. Data analysis was conducted with the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (IBM SPSS), version 21.0 and the level of significance was set at 0.05.

RESULTS The quality of life in patients with peripheral arterial disease was significantly lower than that of the general population in Greece. Less severe clinical condition of the patients was associated with a higher level of physical functioning and physical role, less physical pain, better general health, and higher SF-36 scores for vitality, emotional role, social functioning and mental and physical health. A higher educational level was related with a higher level of physical functioning, less physical pain and better general and physical health.

CONCLUSIONS Peripheral arterial disease of lower extremities is associated with a significant reduction in the quality of life of patients and a decrease in the level of their mental and physical health. Assessment of the quality of life of the patients and the objective criteria of the disease could help physicians to make better clinical decisions, which could result in improvement of the outcome.

Key words: Carotid artery disease, Peripheral arterial disease, Quality of life, SF-36.