Health-related quality of life and extent of self-care practice among heart failure patients in Ethiopia

Background Heart Failure (HF) results in an immense impact on the patients' Health-related quality of life (HRQOL). Heart failure patients HRQOL is dependent on the patients' level of engagement in self-care behaviors. Therefore this study aimed to determine HF patients' health-related quality of life and its relationship with self-care behaviors. Methods An institutional-based study was conducted on 284 heart failure patients at the University of Gondar referral hospital. The data were collected using a structured questionnaire-based interview. The data were analyzed using SPSS version 20. Both descriptive and analytical statistical tests were utilized. A multinomial logistic regression analysis was done to determine the association between HRQOL and different independent variables. Variables with a p-value< 0.05 were considered as a significant predictor of the outcome variable. Results The finding of this study showed that more than sixty-six percent of the study population were females. The overall mean score of HF patients' quality of life was 46.4 +/- 22.4 and the physical and emotional subscale mean score was 20.2 +/- 9.8 and 10.5 +/- 6.8 respectively. The majority of the study participants 147(51.8%) had poor quality of life. The multinomial logistic regression analysis result showed that rural residence (odds ratio 2.41, 95% CI, 1.23 to 4.71) and inadequate level of self-care practice (odds ratio 2.61, 95% CI, 1.43 to 4.78) were independent predictors of poor HRQOL. The correlation analysis also showed that there was a significant negative relationship between HF patients' HRQOL score and Self-care practice score (r = - 0.127, P = 0.032). Conclusion Overall, the majority of HF patients had poor HRQOL. Heart failure patients' HRQOL was significantly associated with place of residence and patients' level of self-care practice. Therefore, patients with HF are required to learn the benefit of self-care behaviors to improve their quality of life and to decrease the disease progression. Furthermore, HF patients who come from rural areas need special emphasis in each follow-up evaluation.