Abstract

NEVES, Conceição Fernandes da Silva; RENTE, José Augusto Prata da Silva; FERREIRA, Ana Catarina da Silva  and  GARRETT, Ana Catarina Martins. Quality of life of people with multiple sclerosis and their caregivers. Rev. Enf. Ref. [online]. 2017, vol.serIV, n.12, pp.85-96. ISSN 0874-0283.  https://doi.org/10.12707/RIV16081.

Background: Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic disease that interferes with the quality of life (QoL) of people with MS and their caregivers. Objectives: To assess the perception of QoL of people with MS and their caregivers. To assess the perception of QoL of people with MS and their caregivers according to gender. To compare the QoL of people with MS with the QoL of their caregivers. Methodology: Application of a questionnaire on the sociodemographic characteristics and QoL (WHOQOL-Bref) in 2 groups, and clinical profiling of people with MS. Results: People with MS and caregivers have a better perception of QoL in the domain of Social relationships and a worse perception in the physical domain. Women with MS and male caregivers have better QoL. The QoL of people with MS is different from that of caregivers, with a statistically significant difference in the overall QoL and general Health (p=.039), Physical (p=.001), and Environment (p=.012) domains. Conclusion: The results suggest that people with MS have worse QoL than caregivers. A nursing intervention should be planned to improve the QoL of both patients and caregivers.

Keywords : quality of life; multiple sclerosis; caregivers.

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