Evaluation of General Health Status in Diabetic Patients Using Short Form Health Survey (SF-36)

The aim of this study is to assess the general health of diabetic type 2 patients by using SF-36 and also to find if there was an association between the scores of eight domains of this tool with disease-specific and demographic variables.

A cross-sectional study was conducted to evaluate the general health of patients with diabetes mellitus type 2. The participants of the present study were randomly selected from rural and urban areas. The diabetic patients visiting community pharmacies in these areas were invited to participate in this study after explaining the goal of the study. A self-reported questionnaire in the Arabic version of the medical outcome survey, the Short-Form (36-item), was conducted. However, uneducated patients were interviewed by trained pharmacists in the community pharmacies.

Two hundred confirmed DM patients were enrolled in this study with a mean age of (50.65 ± 8.914 years). 142 (71%) were male and the remaining 58 (29%) were female. The scores of all domains of SF-36 were significantly lower (p < 0.05) in female patients in comparison to that recorded in men. In addition, diabetic patients aged more than 50 years showed significantly lower scores of most domains of SF-36 (p < 0.05) except for emotional well-being (p > 0.05). The multivariate linear regression analysis demonstrated that gender, age, and treatment type were independent of health status based on the SF-36 survey, while emotional well-being, social functioning, and pain were exceptional.

The outcomes of this study showed a negative correlation between diabetes mellitus and the health status as measured by SF-36. Furthermore, excluding emotional well-being, social functioning, and pain domains, the other parameters of gender, age, and treatment type showed a significant correlation with health status.