Volume : VII, Issue : XII, December - 2018

LEVEL OF DEPRESSION IN RHEUMATOID ARTHRITIS AND LIFE QUALITY

Baloglu Murat

Abstract :

 Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic illness showing quite variations in terms of its progress and prognosis. Therefore» it is critical to evaluate patient’s functional and sociopsychological losses due to rheumatoid arthritis in assessing the severity of the illness. Two patients with the same clinic would view quality of life differently. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship of clinical parameters and depression levei associated with rheumatoid arthritis to quality of life.

The study included 50 patients with rheumatoid arthritis and 50 healthy person as control group. A Standard form was used to gather patients data. Data were collected from  patients about illness duration, the way it started, the first involved joint, systemic and laboratory findings, duration of moming stififhess, pain, Ritchie disjoint index, Lee functional index, fimctional capacity, exiting deformations, factors stimulating the illness and quality of life. The pain was measured by visual analog scale (VAS) and depression level was measured by Beck depression scale, Health Assessment Questionnaire (HAQ), Nottingham Health Profile (NHP) and Arthritis Impact Measurement Scales were used to measure quality of life. First, the patient and control group were compared to see if there is significant difference between the two in ternıs of these measures. Then, the patient data were used to examine the correlation of clinical parameters and depression level associated with rheumatoid arthritis to quality of life scores.

The average age was 50.04 ± 11.14 (25-73) for patient group and 48.40 ± 19.67 (22-76) for control group. Both patient group and control group included 38 females and 12 males. There was no significant difference between two groups in terms of age and gender (p>0.05). The scores of Beck depression scale, HAQ, NHP for patient group were 21.06±7.8,1,38±0.6 and 63.42±17.0, respectively while these scores in the same order were 14.32±6.3, 0.46.0.5 and 37.58 ± 21.3. These there scores were significantly different between two groups (p=0,020, p=0.001. and p=0.00019, respectively). In patient group the depression level was significantly correlated with VAS (r=0.35, p<0.05), Lee fimctional index (r=0.32, p<0.05) and NHP score (r=0.63, p<0.001).

In conclusion, the study found significant differences between the patient and control groups in terms of depression level and NHP and HAQ scores used to measure quality of life, which indicated that the quality of life of the patients with rheumatoid arthritis was negatively influenced. In addition, the study found that depression level was positively correlated with pain, functional index and NHP. These findings suggested that the patients with rheumatoid arthritis should be examined in terms of depression and quality of life

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Article: Download PDF    DOI : https://www.doi.org/10.36106/gjra  

Cite This Article:

LEVEL OF DEPRESSION IN RHEUMATOID ARTHRITIS AND LIFE QUALITY , Baloglu Murat , GLOBAL JOURNAL FOR RESEARCH ANALYSIS : Volume-7| Issue-12 | December-2018

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