Quality of life of the patients with gastroesophageal reflux disease in Serbia

Abstract

Gastroesophageal re flux dis ease (ERD) was of ten con sid ered as a mi nor pub lic health prob lem and its po ten tial se ver ity was not fully rec og nized by the gen eral pub lic, pa tients, the health care system, and in some cases health care pro vid ers. Data about GERD re lated HRQoL in east ern Euro pean pop u la tion are scare. The aim of the study was to eval u ate the bur den of GERD on pa tients treated in Ser bian pri mary health care.The study included 1091 pa tients with di ag nosed GERD, treated in Ser bian pri mary health care. All pa tients com pleted Ser bian ver sion of ge neric self-ad min is tered Cen ter for Dis ease Con trol and Pre ven tion ques tion naire, CDC-HRQoL-4.In our study, 463 (42%) GERD patients self-rated their cur rent health sta tus as fair or poor, 584 (53%) had poor phys i cal health one or more days dur ing the past 30 days, 460 (42%) had poor men tal health one or more days for the same time period. Due to dis ease symp toms 492 (46%) GERD patients felt de pressed one or more days dur ing the past 30 days, 581 (54%) felt tired or sleepy dur ing the same time pe riod. In ad di tion, GERD pa tients had lower scores re gard ing num ber of healthy and unhealthy days.The ob tained re sults had dem on strated that in large pro por tion, GERD im paired pa tient every day lives. A better un der stand ing of the re la tionships be tween GERD and im paired HRQoL may allow the phy si cians in pri mary health care to man age these pa tients more ef fec tively in the fu ture.