Assessment of Quality of Life Among Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus Patients in an Urban Health Center of Tiruvallur District, Tamil Nadu.

ABSTRACT

Introduction Diabetes mellitus (DM) is one of the leading causes of death and disability, in addition to its rapidly increasing prevalence in developing countries. The key element of managing diabetes is quality of life (QoL). It is a factor that is positively related to treatment adherence, and QoL motivates the patient to manage their disease and achieve health and happiness in the long term. We undertook this study in a district of South India among patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) to assess their QoL. Methodology A cross-sectional study was conducted among T2DM patients registered in a noncommunicable disease (NCD) clinic in an urban health center in Tiruvallur District, Tamil Nadu. Participants were selected using a systematic random sampling method from the NCD clinic register. Sociodemographic details of the participants were collected using a pretested, semistructured questionnaire, following which the World Health Organization Quality of Life-Brief Version Scale (WHOQOL-BBREF) questionnaire was used to assess the QoL. Data was entered in MS Excel (Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, Washington, United States) and analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows, Version 25.0 (Released 2017; IBM Corp., Armonk, New York, United States). Results The mean age of the study participants was 53.5 ± 9.2 years. Females constituted 63.81% of the study population compared to males (36.19%). Domain-wise, 55.83% had good physical QoL, 49.1% had good psychological QoL, 49.69% had good social QoL, and 57.1% had good environmental QoL. Overall, 52.8% had a good QoL across all the domains. Conclusion The current study found that patients with diabetes had a good QoL with the exception in educational category. However, it is essential to create an awareness among the diabetic patients about the QoL and also the measures that they can practice to improve their QoL, which should be emphasized through health education, information education communication (IEC), and counselling in NCD clinics.