Health related quality of life among patients with an ostomy in punjab

Context: Ostomy treats and reduces patient’s pain and discomfort, but in many cases ostomy leads to intensified distress and suffering for the patient’s. Adaptation to living with stoma is complex. Studies have shown that stoma creation has a great impact on patient’s health related quality of life.18
Aim: The study aims to assess the health related quality of life among patients with an ostomy.
Setting and Design: A descriptive study was conducted on 100 ostomy subjects visiting surgery OPD of selected hospitals of Ludhiana, Punjab by convenience sampling technique using “Modified City of Hope National Medical Center Quality of Life Questionnaire For Patients With An Ostomy”2003 to assess the quality of life of the ostomy patients. Data was collected by observation & interview method. Statistical analysis used: The quantitative data was analysed using descriptive statistics, Chi- square-test, ANOVA for significance
Results: All the subjects showed impairment in quality of life with mild to moderate impairment in the quality of life of ostomy patient’s. The most affected domain was psychological followed by social domain, physical domain and spiritual domain was least affected (p=0.001).
Conclusion: There is mild to moderate impairment in the quality of life of ostomy patient’s with psychological domain as the most affected domain. Therefore it is recommended that counselling sessions should be focused to improve the quality of life of the patients with an ostomy.