[Quality of life in men with arterial hypertension.]

Systemic arterial hypertension is a Public Health problem, being the most important modifiable risk factor for morbidity and mortality, and the main single contributor to death and disability from all causes. Our objective was to estimate health-related quality of life using the MINICHAL questionnaire, to identify the problems with the greatest impact and the associated risk factors.

An observational prevalence study of a sample of 262 hypertensive men was carried out. Sociodemographic variables, comorbidity, degree of control and treatment, cardiovascular risk, clinical data and target organ lesions were collected. The following questionnaires were applied: MINICHAL, International Score of Prostate Symptoms and International Index of Erectile Function. Quantitative variables are expressed as mean (standard deviation) and median. The qualitative variables are expressed as absolute value and percentage with the estimation of its 95% confidence interval. The comparison of means was carried out by means of the Student's T test or the Mann Whitney test, as appropriate after checking the normality of the variables with the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. The association between qualitative variables was estimated using the Chi square statistic or Fisher's exact test. To determine variables that are associated or not with the presence of worse quality of life, multivariate logistic regression was performed, adjusting for those variables that were significant in the univariate analysis or clinically relevant.

Of the 262 hypertensive men included in the study, 4.6% declared that neither hypertension nor treatment affected their quality of life. Only 58% compared 52.7% presented a good quality of life through the domains "mental state" with respect to "somatic manifestations" of the MINICHAL questionnaire, with prostate symptoms being the one that had a considerable negative impact on both domains.The multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that the sum of the antihypertensive medication and the moderate-severe degree of prostatic symptoms had an independent effect to predict worse quality of life in the "mental state" domain, while the sum of concomitant medication, HDL-cholesterol levels, a pathological electrocardiogram and filling symptoms had an effect on the domain "somatic manifestations".

When analyzing the "mental state" and the "somatic manifestations" of the MINICHAL questionnaire, only half of them presented a good quality of life.