Quality of life in a sample of Egyptian renal transplant recipients

Abstract

Abstract Background Poor quality of life has been reported after renal transplantation. So, we aimed to identify the quality of life and its demographic and clinical correlates among Egyptian renal transplant recipients. A cross-sectional observational study of 230 post-renal transplantation recipients (PRTRs) who were recruited from Ain Shams University Specialized Hospital and Nasser Institute nephrology clinics. All cases were subjected to a designed questionnaire for PRTRs, the semi-structured questionnaire for renal transplant recipients and the Arabic version of the World Health Organization Quality of Life Questionnaire (WHOQOL-100). Results All the PRTRs had unsatisfactory social quality of life (QoL) while 97.8% had unsatisfactory overall QoL; moreover, 92.6% were not satisfied as regards environmental and independence QoL. Psychological dissatisfaction was met in 75.7% of all subjects, whereas the least dissatisfaction rate was the spiritual QoL (15.2%). Younger age groups were the most who complained of unsatisfactory quality of life in all domains except the spiritual QoL. All domains of QoL were found not statistically associated with gender, marital status, or social class. Subjects who received higher education had better psychological and independence QoL. The overall QoL and physical QoL were found to be correlated only with age. The psychological and independence QoL were positively correlated with age, sex, educational level, and occupation while the environmental QL was found to be positively correlated with occupation. Conclusion The prevalence of unsatisfactory quality of life is quite high among PRTRs. Our findings pointed to the need of recognizing quality of life among renal transplant recipients, and we suggest that mental health professionals should be included in the multidisciplinary team.

Keywords

• Quality of life
• Renal transplantation
• Renal transplant recipients