Health Status Evaluation of Type 2 Diabetes Patients with Complications

Abstract

     Previous studies shown that one item self assessed health was a powerful and predictor of health outcomes. The question was asked as how is your health in general? and the answer was five point Likert scale from excellent to poor. The objective of this study was to explore health status of type 2 diabetes patients using one item self-perception question. A cross-sectional study was performed in outpatient diabetic clinic at a general hospital. The sample included 567 patients with 65.4% female, age between 27 and 86 years. All patients were interviewed using developed questionnaire. Chart review was done along the interview to confirm the history of diabetes complications. The results showed that there were significance differences between patients with and without complications in self-perception answers (p < 0.01). Multivariate analysis indicated that patients with complications reported health status of poor and very poor more than patients without complications with significance (odds ratio [OR], 3.66; 95% confidence interval [CI], 2.01 to 6.65) adjusted for age, sex, disease duration and blood sugar level. In summary by using one item self-perception question, results showed that diabetic patients with complications had lower health status than patients without complications. One item self-perception question can be use as a powerful measure of perceived health in type 2 diabetes patients.