Quality of life of cardiac outpatients with and without psychiatric disorders: a cross-sectional study

Background The study aims to measure the quality of life (QOL) for cardiac outpatients with psychiatric disorders (CPP) in comparison to cardiac outpatients without psychiatric disorders (CPOP). A semi-structured interview was performed for consecutive cardiac outpatients. Psychiatric diagnoses were confirmed using the mini-international neuropsychiatric interview (MINI). The QOL was measured by the World Health Organization quality of life (WHOQOL-BREF). Results Out of the 343 enrolled patients, 93 (27.1%) patients were found to have psychiatric disorders. The WHO-BREF score of QOL was 4.25 +/- 0.85. The CPP were found to have statistically significant lower scores in QOL than CPOP in all the WHOQOL-BREF domains. Particularly, the domain of psychological health showed the highest difference between the two groups (76.9 vs. 87.8, P < 0.001), whereas the environment domain showed the lowest difference between them (80.2 vs. 87.9, P < 0.001). Within each QOL domain, patients with congestive heart failure and psychiatric disorders showed the lowest QOL in both the physical domain (51.4 vs. 71.3, P < 0.02) and the social domain (64.7 vs. 81.9, P < 0.05), while patients with vulvular heart disease and psychiatric disorders showed the lowest QOL in the psychological domain (74.6 vs. 85.7, P < 0.001) and patients with arrhythmias and psychiatric disorders in the environment domain (80 vs. 86.2, P < 0.02). Conclusions The QOL of CPP were found to have poorer QOL than CPOP. The magnitude of difference in QOL was the highest in the psychological health domain and the lowest in the environment domain.