Assessment of diabetes risk scoring and quality of life in patients visiting family medicine polyclinics for periodic health examination

Objective: The aim of this study was to evaluate the relationship between FINDRISC diabetes risk and SF-36 quality of life. Method: Our study is a cross-sectional study evaluating the FINDRISC diabetes risk score and SF-36 quality of life questionnaire of patients who come to the Family Medicine Outpatient Clinics of Akdeniz University Faculty of Medicine. FINDRISC diabetes risk scoring was chosen to assess the participants' diabetes risk score. SF-36 quality of life questionnaire was selected to evaluate the quality of life. FINDRISC and SF-36 were applied face-to-face to the participants by researchers Data, SPSS ver. 22.0. Mann Whitney U test, Kruskal-Wallis test and Spearman correlation analysis were used in the comparison and p <0.05 was considered significant. Results: A total of 309 individuals (188 female (60.8%) and 121 male (39.2%)) participated in the study. The mean age of the participants was 37.67 ± 13.42 years. According to FINDRISC risk score, 30.7% of the participants were low risk, 26.2% were slightly elevated risk, 16.8% were moderate risk, 20.7% were high risk and 5.5% were very high risk. The mean scores of the SF-36 quality of life subscales of the participants were as follows: mean physical function 81.55 ± 17.27; the average physical role difficulty was 69.82 ± 37.33; the average emotional difficulty was 66.34 ± 37.84; average energy / vitality 57.31 ± 20.90; mean mental health was 68.45 ± 17.92; the mean social functioning was 73.87 ± 24.79; mean physical pain was 74.02 ± 23.79; The average overall health perception was 60.29 ± 20.78. As diabetes risk scoring scores increased, quality of life scores decreased significantly (p <0.05). The effects of components of FINDRISC diabetes risk scoring on quality of life were examined separately. Physical function, physical role difficulty and general health perception scores decreased with increasing age (p <0.05). As BMI and waist circumference increased, the scores of all components of quality of life decreased statistically (p <0.05). Adequate exercise affects all components of quality of life positively, but the presence of hypertension and high blood sugar levels negatively affect (p <0.05). Family history of diabetes negatively affects other components of quality of life other than emotional role difficulty and mental health (p <0.05). Conclusion: There is an inverse correlation between FINDRISC risk scoring and diabetes risk categories and quality of life components. Low SF-36 scores are largely and directly related to the risk of developing diabetes. As the FINDRISC diabetes risk score increases, scores of SF-36 components of quality of life decrease. Lack of physical activity, obesity, hypertension, borderline or high blood glucose, which are components of the FINDRISC scoring, will positively affect the quality of life of people as well as preventing or delaying diabetes. Key words: FINDRISC, SF-36, diabetes, diabetes risk score, quality of life