An evaluation of health-related quality of life and its determinants among people living with HIV/AIDS attending tertiary care hospital of Kurnool, India

Abstract

Background: HIV/AIDS is known to affect an individual not only physically but also mentally, socially, and financially. It is a syndrome that builds a vacuum in a person affecting his/her life as a whole. Combined with ART, Quality of life (QoL) is an important component in the evaluation of the wellbeing of people living with HIV/AIDS (PLHIV). The objective of this study is to assess health related quality of life of HIV/AIDS patients attending ART clinic Tertiary care hospital, GGH, Kurnool and to determine the association of socio-demographic and disease related variables with health related quality of life.Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted from April 2019 to June 2019 involving 400 purposively selected HIV-positive patients of age >18 years, who were taking highly active anti-retroviral therapy for the past 6months from the ART center, GGH, Kurnool. After obtaining IEC clearance and informed consent, WHOQOL-BREF instrument was used for data collection. Data analysis was performed using IBM SPSS version 26.0.Results: Out of the 400 participants, 60% were males. The mean age of the participants was 38.5±10.54 years. Overall quality of life had a mean score of 69.71. Physical (82.57) and level of independence (78.78) domains showed higher mean score when compared to psychological (63.82), environmental (61.49) and Social (60.26) domains.Conclusions: Among study subjects 15.5% had excellent QoL (≥80), nearly 69.75% had good QoL (60-79) and 14.75% had poor QoL (<60). Low QoL scores were seen in the social domain, suggesting that more social interventions are required in this population.