Quality of Life in Peritoneal and Hemodialysis Patients in China

Background: Much attention has been paid to the quality of life (QOL) in dialysis patients worldwide. However, differences in QOL between peritoneal dialysis (PD) and hemodialysis (HD) patients have not been clearly identified. The objectives of this study were to compare the differences of QOL between PD and HD patients, and to investigate factors contributing to QOL in the Chinese population. Methods: All patients who received PD or HD more than 3 months were enrolled in the study. The demographic and clinical data were also obtained. SF-36 was used to assess QOL. Results: A total of 190 (91.8%) of 207 dialysis patients were enrolled in the study. PD patients had markedly lower scores on role-physical (RP) and bodily pain (BP) domains than HD patients, but had remarkably higher scores on role-emotional (RE) domain (p < 0.05). While the scores of physical component summary (PCS) and mental component summary (MCS) showed no differences between the two groups (p > 0.05). The results of the multiple linear regression analysis indicated that age and cerebrovascular disease had negative correlations with PCS (p < 0.01), whereas the serum prealbumin level had positive correlation with PCS (p < 0.05). The married status was negatively associated with MCS (p < 0.01). But the higher education level was positively associated with MCS (p < 0.01). Conclusions: There were no significant differences on QOL between the two dialysis modalities. The possible factors related to QOL were age, cerebrovascular disease, marital status, education, and serum prealbumin levels.