Assessment of quality of life in Thermal (flame) burn patients: An observational study at Tertiary Care Teaching Hospital in Warangal, A.P., India

Abstract

A severe burn causes significant physical and psychological consequences. The outcome therefore varies considerably, with various types of impact on all aspects of a person’s life and sometimes with permanent impairments. Therefore, this study was aimed to investigate generic quality of lifein burn patients at hospital discharge. This is a Prospective observational study conducted from January 1^st to July 1^st, 2013 in Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Hospital, Warangal, A.P., India. The questionnaire was obtained from the EuroQol group Foundation, after obtaining permission. All analysis was performed with the statistical package graph pad prism for Windows version 5. During the period of six months, 143 patients (54 Males and 89 Females) with mean age of 30.73±12.02 years were studied. Seventy eight percent (78.26%) of total population  reported (moderate to severe) problems in the item “pain/discomfort”, 73.16% in the item usual activities followed by self-care (68.29%), anxiety and depression (53.65%) and mobility (31.79%). The EQ-VAS scores of patients who reported no problems, moderate problems and severe problems were 78.2, 67 and 61, respectively. Our findings suggest that the quality of life is compressed in burn patients.