European Journal of Cardiovascular Medicine

Introduction: Diabetes mellitus (DM) is one of the most common metabolic diseases with a complex, multi- factorial etiology and has varied clinical and biochemical manifestations. The impact of the disease and of treatment on all chronic patients, quality of life (QOL) and lifestyle is a key concern for both the patients themselves and their physicians. Aims: To assess the quality of life (QOL) and the associated risk factors among adult diabetics attending the lifestyle clinic of a teaching hospital, West Bengal. Materials and Methods: This hospital- based, cross- sectional study recruited 152 patients with diabetes to assess the QOL in the lifestyle clinic of a tertiary healthcare facility. The QOL was assessed with the help of the World Health Organization (WHO) QOL BREF instrument. The socio demographic and diabetes- related attributes were collected by a pre-designed and pre-tested structured questionnaire. Clinical and anthropometric examinations were also conducted. All the available data were initially coded and then analyzed using the SPSS, 22.0 licensed software. Result: Association of QOL found with the respondents those were on OHA, on diet modification, on recommended physical activity, having family h/o DM and duration of diabetes. Patients those were using only OHA among them nearly 57% had good quality of life. More than 60% of the participants those who were not on diet modification and 56.13% of participants those were not doing recommended physical activity had poor QOL. It is found that 59.73% of participants those having family h/o DM had poor quality of life. Similarly, 62.86% respondents had poor QOL among those having diabetes of more than equal to 5 years duration. Conclusion: This study concludes that poor QOL was highest in social domain whereas half of the diabetics had an overall good score. Poor QOL was associated with ongoing treatment, patients not following any life style modification, family h/o diabetes, distance from home to hospital along with long waiting period for getting services and also with patients having other known co-morbidities, overweight/obesity and presence of pallor.