Quality of Life and Depression among Lower Limb Amputees

Background: Amputation is the surgical excision of all or part of extremity. After amputation patient may suffer various physical and psychological consequences. These symptoms may be due to adaptive responses to the emotional experiences of this serious impairment. Amputation certainly results in massive change in life situations of a person; therefore, it is important to assess psychological status as well as quality of their life (QOL) of amputation surgery survivors. Objective: To measure quality of life and level of depression among lower limb amputees having transtibial or transfemoral amputation. Moreover, to find the correlation between QOL and depression scores of amputees. Methods: In this study 70 both female and male lower limb amputees participated. To assess QOL of amputees WHOQOL-BREF questionnaire and for assessing status of depression PHQ-9 questionnaire was used. Results: Mean scores of all domains of QOL questionnaire were: physical (53.44), psychological (56.41), social (60.29) and environmental (54.10). Among all amputees, 55 participants reported to have mild - severe depression. Moreover, strong negative correlation was analyzed between QOL score and depression score of responders (-0.615, p=0.000). Social domain of QOL was strongly correlated with overall QOL score of amputees (0.808, p=0.000). Conclusions: Amputees participated in this study encountered significant life changes after amputation which adversely effected their quality of life. Many of participants suffered moderate depression. Depression and QOL scores of amputees were negatively correlated (p<0.05).