Measuring Quality-of-life (QOL) and determining its correlates for hemodialysis (HD) patients is important for interventions' design and clinical decision-making. Three hundred and thirty-six patients with end-stage-renal-disease (ESRD) from six centers provided data using SF-36. Descriptive analysis of QOL was conducted and linear regression was used to model the relationship between QOL and several covariates. Patients have mean (SD) age 55.3 (13.4) years, mainly females (56.5%), between 41 and 60 years (47.9%), Married (61.6%), retired (45.5%), with income >1000 KD (51.2%). Most patients were diagnosed with ESRD ≥ one year ago (88.1%), have diabetes as primary cause of ESRD (38.1%), on dialysis for ≥ three years (50.0%). Significant differences in QOL were among gender (PV < 0.001), education levels (PV < 0.001), employment status (PV < 0.001), and income (PV = 0.003). Being male (PV = 0.047), employed (PV = 0.098) were associated with increase in QOL. Patients with income <500 KD (PV = 0.061), diagnosed with ESRD during last 6-12 months (PV = 0.049) were associated with decrease in QOL after adjusting for other covariates. In conclusion, QOL is worse among females, unemployed, those with income <500 KD, and those diagnosed with ESRD between 6 and 12 months. Interventions for patients with worse QOL will reduce hospitalizations, risk of cardiovascular events and other co-morbidities.
Keywords: ESRD; Hemodialysis; Kuwait; SF-36; multiple linear regression; quality-of-life.