Evaluation of health anxiety in predialitic and dialitic chronic renal failure patients

This study was conducted on the predialitic chronic renal disease patients with creatinine clerance below 30 ml/min without psychiatric disease, and dialitic male and female patients above 18 years of age in Celal Bayar University Hafsa Sultan Hospital Department of Nephrology. The patients were evaluated with sociodemographic information form, SF-36 quality of life scale, health anxiety inventory and somatosensorial amplification scale. Anxiety symptoms and quality of life scales of predialitic patients and dialytic patients were compared. There were 32 male (53,3%) and 28 female (46,7%) patients. Mean age was 57,67±14,28 in predialytic patients and 54,20±19,15 in dialytic patients. There were no statistically significant difference in sociodemographic features between two groups. There were no statistically significant difference in SF-36 form except physical role functioning between two groups (p=0,077). Physical role functioning (restriction in working hours, using excessive effort in daily and work activities) evaluates the difficulties related with physical health problems and low scores show the decrease in quality of life in dialytic patients. There were statistically significant difference between interdialytic gain weight and total score of somatosensorial amplification scale (p=0,021). The interdialytic gain weight was higher as the anxiety level was getting higher. There was no statistically significant difference in health anxiety inventory between predialytic and dialytic patients (p=0,288) but mean score of predialytic patients (18,06±10,34) was higher than mean score of dialytic patients (17,86±9,03). There was no statistically significant difference in somatosensorial amplification scale between predialytic and dialytic patients (p=0,726) but mean score of dialytic patients (30,76±7,20) was higher than mean score of predialytic patients (27,36±5,69). When results were evaluated, there was no statistically significant difference in anxiety levels between predialytic and dialytic patients. The patients should have psychiatric examination when the patient starts dialysis and in further controls. There can be improvement in mortality and morbidity rates when quality of life and compatibility of the patient are increased with psychiatric support.