Purpose: To assess the quality of life (QoL) changes in patients with congestive heart failure (CHF) one year after cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT).
Methods: The study included 82 patients (68 males and 14 females) aged from 30 to 74 (mean age 55.8±9.2 years) who underwent implantation of a biventricular cardiac pacemaker for CRT. Depending on the echocardiographic response to CPT, the patients were divided into two groups: 56 people with a positive response (responders) and 26 people with insufficient response (non-responders). The SF-36 questionnaire was used to measure QoL. The results of the questionnaire were represented as scores over the eight subscales: physical functioning (PF), role-physical functioning (RP), bodily pain (BP), general health (GH), vitality (VT), social functioning (SF), role-emotional (RE), and mental health perceptions (MH). The QoL assessment was performed before and one year after CRT.
Results: Patients with CHF one year following CRT had significantly higher rates of improvement in PF QoL (before CRT 46.28±26.16; one year after CRT 53.05±27.65, p=0.023). The statistical tendency towards QoL improvement was revealed: VT QoL (before CRT 47.07±20.12, after CRT 51.83±20.07, p=0.081), SF (before СРТ 61.58±25.06, after CRT 67.07±24.57, p=0.088). Group of responders one year after CRT had significantly higher rates of improvement of QoL in PF (45.2±26.0 before CRT vs 57.1±26.4 after CRT, p=0.001); in VT (46.5±20.8 vs 54.4±19.7, p=0.010) and in SF (60.9±26.4 vs 70.8±20.8, p=0.012). The statistical tendency towards QoL improvement was revealed in BP (57.5±25.1 before CRT vs 64.8±23.8 after CRT, p=0.079), in GH (45.3±16.4 vs 49.1±18.0, p=0.079) and in MH (57.7±18.9 vs 62.5±17.7, p=0.081). In the group of nonresponders the statistical tendency towards decrease in QoL was detected during one year after CRT in RE (46.2±45.3 before CRT vs 26.9±41.1 after CRT, p=0.07). No significant differences were found in paired comparisons of other QoL indicators.
Conclusion: We revealed significant increase in PF index in patients with CHF one year following CRT. The study showed that QoL was generally improving one year following CRT in responders while a tendency towards decrease in RE was detected in non-responders.