Objective: To assess the impact of gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) on quality of life (QOL) in local population.
Study design: Cross-sectional, descriptive study.
Place and duration of study: Hepatogastroenterology Department, Sindh Institute of Urology and Transplantation, Karachi, from June 2016 to December 2017.
Methodology: Patients with GERD visiting the outpatients' clinics were enrolled. Those who had history of dysphagia, malignant disease, anemia, weight loss, cardiovascular diseases, renal failure, cirrhosis, rheumatologic diseases and patients taking non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDS) or steroids during the last two weeks were exluded. A predesigned questionnaire was used to calculate GERD impact scale (GIS) score, with a value of >18 being considered as impaired QOL. Chi-square test was used to identify factors associated with impaired QOL.
Results: A total of 782 patients with mean age of 37.3 ±8.99 years (range: 18-65 years) were studied. Majority (505, 64.5%) were younger than 40 years of age. Predominant study population were females, i.e. 413 (52.8%). Among these, 127 (16.2%) patients had symptoms lasting more than a year, 132 (16.9%) were smokers, 82 (10.5%) had diabetes mellitus (DM), and 63 (8.1%) had hypertension. A total of 297 (38%) patients had impaired QOL. On logistic regression analysis, the impaired QOL was associated with age greater than 40 years (p=0.001), body mass index (BMI) >25 Kg/m2 (p= 0.001), smoking (p=0.001), hypertension (p=0.001) and diabetes mellitus (p=0.001).
Conclusion: A significant proportion of patients had impaired QOL due to GERD. Factors affecting QOL in such patients were higher age, increased BMI, history of smoking, hypertension and DM.