Introduction: Chronic non-communicable disease are illnesses that require attention throughout life and they require people to make major changes to adapt their lives to these conditions: both for the patient and the patient’s family. The onset of endstage renal disease and subsequent recommendation of dialysis as a treatment option involves a change in lifestyle for both patients and close persons. Dialysis for chronic kidney disease patients can seriously impair patients’ health-related quality of life, strain resources, cause caregiver strain and drive a family to dysfunction. Objective: This study aimed to determine if there was an association between the Family APGAR and kidney disease quality of life (KD-QOL) among these hemodialysis (HD) patients of Southern Isabela Medical Center (SIMC). Methods: This is a cross-sectional, analytical study design. After consent was secured, the KDQOL Short Form version 1.3 questionnaire and Family APGAR tool were given to HD patients of SIMC from May 15 to June 15, 2020. The descriptive statistics (frequency and weighted mean) and Pearson product-moment correlation were used thru IBM SPSS™ for Windows™ version 20. Results: One hundred three HD patients were included in the study. Most of the participants were males (58%), single (62%), Asian/Pacific Islanders by complexion (40%), high school graduates (32%), disabled (24%), and were insured by PhilHealth and other institutions (78%). Most of the participants had diabetes mellitus (26%) and hypertension (24%) as co-morbidities. Majority of the participants responded affirmatively with little health limitations and restrictions from various daily life activities. The extent of the participants’ varied feelings in the past 4 weeks were felt “some of the time”. The participants’ perception on their health were ambivalent whether they felt sick or healthy. The participants also “don’t know” whether their condition interferes too much with their life. However, they were “moderately bothered” in terms of physical symptoms. They also felt that their condition “moderately bothered” some aspects in their daily lives. They were “somewhat satisfied” with the support of the family and friends, and “moderately satisfied with the services rendered by the HD staff of SIMC. Conclusion and Recommendation The study determined the clinical profile of 103 patients with CKD on HD and the relationship of KD-QOL to Family APGAR scores. The analysis showed that the relationship between overall Family APGAR score and KD-QOL score was inversely very weak and statistically non-significant (r = -0.005, n = 103, p = 0.947). It is recommend that similar studies be conducted from various HD centers to validate the findings of this study and explore more areas of understanding the HD patients’ coping mechanism/s that could affect the QOL perception. Lastly, caregiver strain can also be conducted among family members of HD patients.
Quality of Life ; Renal Insufficiency, Chronic ; Renal Dialysis