Health and Quality of Life Outcomes (Aug 2011)
Health related quality of life in patients with anogenital warts
Abstract
Abstract Introduction The health-related quality-of-life (HRQoL) instruments are an important tool for the evaluation of medical outcomes. Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) influence the patients' life. We aimed to evaluate the HRQoL in patients with anogenital warts at the time of and 1 month after the diagnosis. Materials and methods We used the short-form (SF)-36 questionnaire to compare the HRQoL of 91 patients with anogenital warts to 53 control subjects with the same socioeconomic characteristics. Results There was no statistical difference in the overall HRQoL measurement between the anogenital wart patients and controls. However, there was an improvement in the scales of vitality (65.22 ± 15.70 vs. 69.04 ± 14.11, respectively; p Conclusions HRQoL does not appear to be influenced in anogenital wart patients, as measured by the generic instrument SF-36. It is therefore important to develop specific instruments for the measurement of HRQoL in this group of patients.