Assessment of quality of life and relevant factors in elderly diabetic patients in the Shanghai community.

Purpose: The study was to assess the quality of life (QOL) of the elderly diabetes mellitus (DM) in Shanghai community and to screen the possible risk factors.
Methods: A total of 951 patients with elderly DM and 1007 elderly subjects with normal glucose tolerance from the same community as control group were enrolled in the study. A door-to-door retrospectively epidemiological survey was used to collect data of QOL, demographic, and diabetic information. The SF-36 instrument (Chinese edition) was used to assess QOL. Multiple stepwise linear regression analysis was also used to identify possible risk factors of QOL in elder DM.
Results: In subjects with elderly DM, the general assessment of perceived health was worse, compared with the normal elderly people; the mean score of multi-item dimensions assessment had been decreased, the lowest and highest scores of which on SF-36, respectively, were general health and body pain (ranged from 42.08 to 77.00). Based on the multiple stepwise regression analysis, 23 risk factors entered 9 multiple regressive models (9 dependent variables of which stand for the scores of 8 dimensions and the total score on SF-36) with different amount ultimately. Within the 13 risk factors that affect QOL of the elderly diabetic patients, the negative correlated factors were gender, age, payment ability of medical treatment, tumor, level of fasting plasma glucose (FPG), medicines purchasing channels, diabetic microvascular complications, diabetic macrovascular complications, acute complications, while the positive correlated factors were occupation, income, exercises, knowledge of DM. The multiple correlation coefficient square (R2) represented the above 13 risk factors had a totally 30.5% impact on the entire QOL.
Conclusions: QOL of elderly DM population had significantly been decreased; QOL of the elderly patients in Shanghai community had many risk factors, which on one hand stated the complexity of elderly DM, and on the other hand gave us many useful and practical methods to improve QOL of elderly DM.
(Copyright 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.)