Does Hemodialysis Improve Health-Related Quality of Life in Chronic Kidney Disease? A Tertiary Care Centre Experience

Introduction: Advances in dialysis procedures have improved treatment and prolonged lives of chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients. However, improving survival via dialysis is not enough. Assessment of health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in CKD patients has evolved with treatment advances so that the expectation of patient outcomes has grown from simple survival to achieving a sense of well-being.

Objective: To evaluate HRQoL scores with either Hemodialysis (HD) or non-dialysis-dependent advanced CKD.

Methods: Adults CKD patients with eGFR less than 30 ml/min/1.73 m² were randomly selected and divided into two groups; group A and B. Group A consisted of patients on medical management without any renal replacement therapy and group B with patients undergoing thrice-weekly in-center HD for more than three months. All patients were assessed for HRQoL through the SF-36 questionnaire. Patients having psychiatric illness or cognitive dysfunction, transplanted kidney and haemodialysis less than three months were excluded from study.

Results: HRQoL composite summary scores were severely and significantly impaired in group B patients as compared to group A. The mean PCS scores in group A and B were 34.52±5.54 and 31.08±6.83, respectively and the difference being statistically significant. The MCS scores also showed a statistically significant difference among both groups.

Conclusion: In our study low scores were registered in both the composite summary scores of HRQoL in HD group of patients as compare to non-HD group Study points that care is often suboptimal by developed world standards.