The effect of co-morbidities on health-related quality of life in patients placed on the waiting list for total joint re
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The effect of co-morbidities on health-related quality of life in patients placed on the waiting list for total joint replacement Ulla Tuominen*1,2, Marja Blom3,4, Johanna Hirvonen2, Seppo Seitsalo5, Matti Lehto6, Pekka Paavolainen5, Kalevi Hietanieni3, Pekka Rissanen7 and Harri Sintonen2 Address: 1National Research and Development Centre for Welfare and Health, Helsinki, Finland, 2University of Helsinki, Finland, 3HUCH Hospital Area, Espoo, Finland, 4Academy of Finland, 5Orton Orthopaedic Hospital, Helsinki, Finland, 6Coxa, Hospital for Joint Replacement, Medical Research Fund of Tampere University Hospital, Tampere, Finland and 7University of Tampere, Finland Email: Ulla Tuominen* - [email protected]; Marja Blom - [email protected]; Johanna Hirvonen - [email protected]; Seppo Seitsalo - [email protected]; Matti Lehto - [email protected]; Pekka Paavolainen - [email protected]; Kalevi Hietanieni - [email protected]; Pekka Rissanen - [email protected]; Harri Sintonen - [email protected] * Corresponding author
Published: 15 March 2007 Health and Quality of Life Outcomes 2007, 5:16
doi:10.1186/1477-7525-5-16
Received: 5 February 2007 Accepted: 15 March 2007
This article is available from: http://www.hqlo.com/content/5/1/16 © 2007 Tuominen et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract Background: Co-morbidity is a powerful predictor of health care outcomes and costs, as well as an important cofounder in epidemiologic studies. The effect of co-morbidities is generally related to mortality or complications. This study evaluated the association between co-morbidity and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in patients awaiting total joint replacement. Methods: A total of 893 patients were recruited to the study between August 2002 and November 2003 in four Finnish hospitals. The effect of co-morbidity on HRQoL was measured by the generic 15D instrument and by a Visual Analog Scale (VAS). Comparative variance analysis of socio-demographic and clinical characteristics was described by using either an independent samples t-test or the Chi-square test. The differences in each of the 15D dimensions and the overall 15D single index score for patients were calculated. Two-sided p-values were calculated with the Levene Test for Equality of Variances. Results: Patients with co-morbidity totaled 649; the incidence of co-morbidity was 73%. The mean number of co-morbidities among the patients was two. At baseline the 15D score in patients with and without co-morbidity was 0.778 vs 0.816, respectively. The difference of the score (0.038) was clinically and statistically significant (P < 0.001). The patients' scores with and without co-morbidity on the different 15D d
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