QUALITY OF LIFE OF PEOPLE WITH DIABETIC FOOT ULCERS IN OUTPATIENT TREATMENT: CROSS-SECTIONAL STUDY

Abstract

Objective: to analyze the quality of life of people with diabetic foot ulcers in outpatient treatment. Method: descriptive and cross-sectional study, conducted between February and April 2019, with 50 people with Diabetes Mellitus, followed in a specialized outpatient clinic. The sociodemographic and clinical questionnaire, the Freiburg Life Quality Assessment Wound Version (FLQA-WK), descriptive statistics and the Student’s t-comparison and Anova tests were applied. Results: a lower score was observed in the physical symptoms domain (1.84) and a higher score in the daily life domain (3.52). The total quality of life score was 2.61, on a scale ranging from one to five, with significant correlation between clinical variables, such as time of diagnosis of diabetes >10 years (p-value=0.005), hospital admissions (p-value=0.019) and nephropathy (p-value=0.001). Conclusion: quality of life was considered regular, with changes in the daily life domain, being negatively influenced by clinical variables.