Background/Purpose: Quality of life is commonly impaired in patients with chronic inflammatory diseases. The disease itself as well as the drugs used may be responsible for this impairment. Behçet’s syndrome (BS) is a multisystem vasculitis with a wide variety of manifestations including oral ulcers, genital ulcers, nodular lesions, papulopustular lesions, arthritis, uveitis, venous thrombosis, arterial aneurysms, neurologic and gastrointestinal involvement. Determining the factors affecting quality of life in BS patients, would help developing effective management strategies.
Methods: Behçet Disease Quality of Life (BDQoL) and Short- Form 36 (SF-36) questionnaires were filled by consecutive BS patients attending our outpatient clinic. Socioeconomic factors, each type of organ involvement during the disease course, during the previous 4 weeks, disabilities caused by each, treatment modalities and overall disease activity were tested with regression analysis as possible determinants of quality of life. Men and women were also analyzed separately.
Results: 322 patients (M/F: 166/156, mean age: 37.9±11.1 years) were included. 157 patients had eye involvement, 72 patients had vascular involvement, 67 patients had joint involvement, 20 patients had neurologic involvement, 2 patients had gastrointestinal involvement and 93 patients had only mucocutaneous involvement without major organ involvement. Determinants of BDQoL in the whole group were BSAS, household income, work disability, perception of insufficient income, neurologic damage (R²:0.47, F: 48.76, p<0.001). Among women they were BSAS, perception of insufficient income, neurologic and mucocutaneous involvement (R²:0.40, F: 19.75, p<0.001). Among men they were work disability, BSAS, household income, perception of insufficient income, vascular involvement during the last 4 week and damage caused by neurologic involvement (R²:0.56, F: 29.70, p<0.001). SF-36 scores were well correlated with BDQoL scores (r=-0.69 for physical component and r=-0.63 for mental component).
Conclusion: In addition to overall disease activity and neurologic damage, mucocutaneous involvement in women and recent eye and vascular events in men seem to impair quality of life in BS. These findings are important for developing management strategies and outcome measures.
Disclosure:
S. Bozcan,
None;
Y. Ozguler,
None;
K. Tascilar,
None;
C. Saygin,
None;
D. Uzunaslan,
None;
G. Hatemi,
None.
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ACR Meeting Abstracts - https://acrabstracts.org/abstract/predictors-of-quality-of-life-in-behcets-syndrome/