Introduction: The purpose of the paper was to perform a comparative analysis of the impact of T2DM on QoL, including specific ADDQoL domains and associations between QoL, selected socio-demographic factors (including gender, age, education, residence, marital status, professional activity) or clinical parameters (HbA1c levels, fasting blood glucose, BMI, duration of DM, complications, treatment used), in adult diabetic patients from Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The study group included 608 patients diagnosed with T2DM. There were 214 patients from Poland, 196 from the Czech Republic and 198 from Slovakia.
Results: Overall, respondents from all three countries rated their QoL as good or very good. The mean scores for the item "If I did not have diabetes, my quality of life would be" were slightly higher for Poles than for Slovaks and Czechs. In the ADDQoL results, the weighted impact scores were negative for all domains. The lowest scores in all three countries were found for "freedom to eat" for all patients; the highest for "living conditions". For Polish patients, the linear regression model demonstrated the following significant AWI predictors: pre-university education and past smoking. For Czech patients, the linear regression model demonstrated that none of the characteristics analyzed were significant independent predictors of AWI. In the For Slovak patients, the linear regression model demonstrated the following significant AWI predictors: higher education and concurrent heart failure.
Conclusion: In summary, our findings demonstrate that T2DM has a negative impact on all aspects of patients' QoL, which is the strongest in terms of the freedom to eat and dietary habits, regardless of the country. Education, past smoking, and concurrent heart failure were the only independent predictors of QoL in our study. This suggests a need for further research that would include more variables and a larger number of patients.
Keywords: diabetes mellitus; quality of life.
© 2020 Krzemińska et al.