Patients with Chronic Kidney Disease: Background Factors Associated with Experienced Health Status and Life Satisfaction

The prevalence of chronic kidney disease (CKD) is increasing and CKD often goes undiagnosed and untreated until its later stages when irreversible damage has occurred. Patients with CKD have been reported to have lower quality of life than the general population, but the patient-reported outcome data on CKD patients in Finland are limited.

The primary outcome of this structural, multiple-choice survey study was to assess life satisfaction and experienced health status in Finnish patients with CKD. The results were presented as numbers (n) and percentages (%). The secondary outcome was to identify patient groups using the K-means clustering method based on preselected response variables and to assess the associated background factors.

In total, 558 patients with CKD responded to the electronic survey. Of the 395 patients who completed the whole survey, 39.7% reported their health status as good, pretty good, or excellent, and 59.9% were fairly or very satisfied with their life. Two clusters of patients could be identified based on their health status and life satisfaction: patients with (1) poorer or (2) better well-being. Patients with poorer well-being were more likely to have at least 3 comorbidities (66.8% vs 44.3%) and lack follow-up visits entirely (10.5% vs 1.9%), compared with patients with better well-being. The patients with poorer well-being were less often knowledgeable about the disease, its causes (35.5% vs 48.1%), and its care (30.7% vs 20.3%) than patients with better well-being, and they showed weaker adherence to lifestyle interventions such as following dietary instructions (30.3% vs 40.5%).

Screening for CKD to enable early diagnosis, early commitment to treatment, and empowering the patient by providing education are key for improvement of health and life satisfaction in patients with CKD. Therefore, resources should be allocated to these measures of action.