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Assessment of the impact of the pandemic Covid-19 on health and quality of life of chronic hemodialysis patients (Master thesis)

Καλαϊτζή, Χρυσούλα/ Kalaitzi, Chrysoula

The purpose of this original study is to investigate the possible impact of Covid-19 pandemic, on Health and Quality of Life levels, of patients on hemodialysis. More specific, there has been an effort to record physical and psychological issues that may have appeared during the pandemic, as well as the changes these patients had to adapt to, in their everyday life. A questionnaire (of 6 demographic and 18 Health and Quality of Life questions) was designed and distributed to 200 hemodialysis patients. The results have been analyzed using the SPSS statistical program and descriptive statistics, as well as X2-indipendence tests, took place. Results were extremely interesting, while research questions initially raised, have been clearly answered. In more details, it was found that the fear for vaccination side effects, led to a 20% less actions than those didn’t fear them. However, vaccination contributed towards serious illness avoiding by 68% among hemopurified patients participated in the present study. Vaccination though, didn’t correlate neither to a possible hospitalization nor to any effect on quality of life aspects. Concerning the particularly serious questions regarding the probable disease and the possible hospitalization of the participants, both age and gender at first, didn’t show any correlation despite the fact that those over 55 y.o. appeared to be more vulnerable (a conclusion though, which requires further investigation). Hospitalization, on the other hand, proved to be correlated to disease, since almost every participant who diseased, required it. Finally, quality of life seemed to be affected in both non-patient and hospitalized groups. Specifically, those didn’t disease by COVID-19, as well as those had to be hospitalized, significantly changed their daily life, while those diseased felt isolated, 3 times more than those didn’t, in contrast to participants hospitalized, who didn’t feel any kind of isolation.