Applications of health related quality of life (HRQoL) as an intervention impact assessment in the management of hypertension: a systematic review

Introduction: Persons living with hypertension wrestle with the physical, psychological, and social demands of their illness without adequate help or support from medical care. This has buttressed the need to research into the perceptions of patients in the context of their subjective feelings towards their wellbeing. This is termed “health related quality oflife (HRQoL)”. One of the most important goals of all health interventions is to improve the quality of life of persons affected by disease and many researchers had advocated for the need to see health outcome beyond clinical and laboratory parameter alone. Therefore need to study and assess HRQoL as well. This study however set out to review available intervention studies in the scientific literature from 1980 till date (that met the set eligible criteria) and those which employed quality of life as a primary outcome measurement. Methods: The PRISMA and Standard Cochrane Collaboration systematic review techniques were used as guidelines for the review while varieties of online journals, database and library were searched. These yielded over a thousand articles which were screened systematically using stringent eligibility criteria to scale down to 37 articles out of which 6 articles employed intervention as study approach and quality of life as primary outcome measurement. Results: The age range of the participants in the review is between 18 to 80 years. Results revealed that only 4 out of the 6 articles were randomized control trial (RCT) out of which only one was blinded. Four of the studies used SF-36 tool for assessment of HRQoL. Another Four studies reported statistically significant increase in overall HRQoL of intervention group over a control group. Two studies did not analyse significance level. The individual dimensions of HRQoL revealed discrepancies in there viewed articles. Mental health improvement was observed to be the only common improved outcome across the studies. Conclusion: It was concluded that there is still dearth of literature on HRQoL outcome assessment of hypertensive studies. It is suggested that future research on interventional studies should endeavor to use quality of life as a primary or as part of outcome measurements.

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