Effect of Education on Improvement of Quality of Life by SF-20 in Type 2 Diabetic Patients

Diabetes is a complex disorder associated with several potentially preventable disabilities, such as blindness, amputation, neuropathy, retinopathy and cardiovascular disease.The incidence of diabetes is increasing and the prevalence of diabetes is approaching epidemic proportion in many developing countries in Middle East including Iran. The prevalence of type 2diabetes in Iran is 4-4.5% and in population aged above 30 years is greater than 14%. The incidence and prevalence of diabetes vary in different areas of Iran, so the prevalence of type 2diabetes in Yazd is higher than other provinces of Iran. The subjects in the present study were type 2diabetes patients with range 25-75 years old. 120 individuals were randomly selected from the list of the referee patients of the Diabetes Research center of Yard. They were divided into two groups: case group (60persons) and control group (60 persons). The health related quality of life was measured with SF-20 questionnaire. The education as intervention factor was performed using face-to-face and group teaching methods to case group. All data which were collected before and after intervention (two months after education) were transferred directly into SPSS. For data analysis, Chi-square, t test and...were used. The mean duration of diabetes of patients was 9.87(SD=7.2) years.8.3% patients managed diabetes by diet only, while 84.4% and 7.3% were taking oral hypoglycemic agents and insulin respectively. About 72.4% of patients had neuropathy and 66% retinopathy. Intervention caused an increase in scores of the six dimensions and Quality of life QOL of case group after intervention. There was significant difference between the scores of four dimensions of SF20 and QOL of case and control groups after intervention (P= 0.000-0.007). Diabetes requires the patients to selfmanage their disease and is a lifetime struggle to maintain and increase QOL. Treatment plans that inherently improve or include strategies to enhance patients' QOL may increase compliance, thereby improving these patients' metabolic status.