Life Satisfaction in Patients undergoing Kidney Dialysis

The kidneys are bean shaped organs that serve several essential roles in humans. The most important function of the kidneys is to remove wastes from the body. When the kidneys do not work as well as they should, the wastes in the body are not removed. This condition can be treated by dialysis wherein accumulated waste is removed from the patients' body either by Hemodialysis (HD) or Peritoneal dialysis (PD). On an average 2,53,050 patients undergo dialysis every month in India. The present research investigated upon the impact of dialysis on life satisfaction of 120 patients undergoing HD or PD. The Life Satisfaction Scale (LSS) had six dimensions viz. Health, Personal, Economic, Marital, Social and Job satisfaction {Alam and Srivastava, 2001.}was administered to the patients. The results were statistically analysed using a 2x2 ANOVA design, findings of the current research indicated that PD patients had significantly higher health satisfaction as compared to HD patients. The males exhibited higher overall life satisfaction compared to females. The PD patients had higher overall life satisfaction compared to HD patients. It was observed that significant interaction effect existed between gender and type of dialysis with regards to overall life satisfaction.