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Quality of life in Wilson's disease
R N Komal Kumar1, A B Taly, K P S Nair
1Department of Neurology, National Institute of Mental Health and NeuroSciences (NIMHANS), Bangalore, India.
Background:
Assessment of Quality of life (QoL) is fast assuming significance as the measure of health in many disorders.
Aim:
To correlate clinical severity and QoL in patients with Wilson's disease (WD).
Materials And Methods:
We evaluated patients of WD on regular follow up for at least two years and aged over 18 years using Neurological Symptom Score (NSS) for clinical severity and WHO-BREF for QoL at a university teaching hospital. Patients with inability to respond to the questionnaire due to behavioral problems, low IQ or other disease related factors were excluded. These 30 patients (M:F:: 23:7) had a mean age of 27.97 +/- 11.16 years at evaluation and the mean duration of treatment of 9.2 +/- 6.4 years.
Results:
All four domains of WHO-QoL-BREF viz., Physical, Psychological, Social and Environmental correlated well with each other (p < 0.01). The NSS correlated inversely with the physical domain (p < 0.02), while the duration of treatment had a positive correlation with the physical domain (p < 0.01). None of the other features of QoL showed any significant correlation with age, NSS or duration of treatment.
Conclusion:
QoL is complementary to formal neurological assessment and should be routinely incorporated in the evaluation of outcome of patients with WD and other chronic neurological disorders.
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