Thoracic transplantation
The Quality of Life of Patients on the Lung Transplantation Waiting List

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.transproceed.2008.02.035Get rights and content

Abstract

Introduction

Lung transplantation (LTx) candidates present incapacitating symptoms related to their mobility and activities of daily living, thereby affecting their work, social and emotional relations, and quality of life (QoL).

Objective

To study the QoL of LTx candidates, seeking to identify domains that suffer the greatest impact and verify if there are differences among these impairments according to the original lung disease.

Methods

We applied the Short Form-36 questionnaires and St George's Respiratory Questionnaire (SGRQ). All data were analyzed by one-way analysis of variance and the Kruskal Wallis test for the probability with significance at P < 0.05.

Results

Fifty patients were divided into groups of emphysema (n = 16), bronchiectasis (n = 12), idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (n = 7), and cystic fibrosis (n = 15). The functional capacity, physical aspects, general status, and vitality domains showed average values below 50 points. The cystic fibrosis group showed higher functional capacity scores (46 ± 23) than the emphysema (12 ± 13) or idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis cohort (7 ± 5). The limitation caused by pain affected the bronchiectasis more than the cystic fibrosis group (52 ± 28 vs 81 ± 25, respectively). The SGRQ scores showed impairment among all groups in all domains with average values over 50. The activities domain shows the highest score value; the emphysema (92 ± 10) and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis cohorts (91 ± 9) were extremely affected compared with the cystic fibrosis (69 ± 21) and bronchiectasis subjects (79 ± 16). The impact domain show that subjects with cystic fibrosis were less emotionally affected by the disease.

Conclusion

LTx candidates showed great impairment of their QoL due to their health problems, above all in the physical-functional aspects; the cystic fibrosis patients were the least affected by their health status.

Section snippets

Materials and Methods

Our sample consisted of LTx candidates who were selected for presenting irreversible lung disease—end-stage lung disease—with a life expectancy from 1 to 2 years. International criteria were adopted to select patients according to their pretransplant lung disease.

After having placed the patients on the LTx waiting list the QoL evaluation was performed by administering two questionnaires, of which one was generic and the other disease-specific. The instruments that assessed general health status

Results

The 50 patients were divided according to the diagnoses of emphysema (n = 16), bronchiectasis (n = 12), idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (n = 7), and cystic fibrosis (n = 15). The demographic characteristics are shown in Table 1.

Discussion

The results of this study are preliminary, being limited by the small number of patients in the sample. Nonetheless, we noted that patients with advanced pneumonopathies on the LTx waiting list showed great impairments in their QoL due to health status. In the SGRQ, the questions are geared toward symptoms, activities, and emotional impacts related to the disease. Since all patients have serious pneumonopathies, it was expected that these domains would be seriously affected. All subjects

References (12)

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