Symptoms formation and discomfort, quality of life and related factors in patients after renal transplantation

This study was conducted to determine symptom formation and discomfort, quality of life and related factors in patients after kidney transplantation. It is a descriptive and cross-sectional study. The study was carried out in the Nephrology Outpatient Clinic and the data were collected between March 2021 and February 2022. The sample of the study consisted of 170 patients who underwent kidney transplantation. Research data were collected with the Sociodemographic and Clinical Information Form, the Modified Post-Transplantation Symptom Occurrence and Discomfort 58 Item ScaleTR (MTSORD-58TR), and the Short Form – SF 36 Quality of Life Scale. Anova test, t-test, ridit analysis, regression analysis, linear regression analysis, correlation analysis and Pearson correlation analysis were used in the analysis of the data. The mean age of the patients participating in the study was 45.92±13.40 years, 37.1% of them had 1 to 5 years after transplantation, 74.7% of them were transplanted from a living donor and 82.4% of them used triple immunosuppressive drugs. The mean Symptom Occurrence score of the MTSORD-58TR scale (41.60=21.46) and Symptom Discomfort mean score (37.69=23.80) of the patients were found. Statistically significant differences were found between patients' post-transplant immunosuppressive use and Symptom Occurrence and Discomfort total scores (p<0.05). The most common symptoms in patients are fatigue, hair thinning/shedding, muscle weakness, heartburn and pain; as discomfort, weakness in the muscles, wounds / warts around the genitals, pain in the joints, fatigue and spots on the face and on the back are seen. Statistically significant differences were found between the triple immunosuppressive treatment and the emotional role sub-dimension total scores of the quality of life scale (p<0.05). The increase in the symptom occurrence and discomfort scores of the patients negatively affects their quality of life.