Abstract

CARDONA-ARIAS, Jaiberth Antonio  and  HIGUITA-GUTIERREZ, Luis Felipe. Applications of a WHO-designed instrument for the quality of life evaluation. Rev Cubana Salud Pública [online]. 2014, vol.40, n.2, pp. 175-189. ISSN 0864-3466.

Introduction: the World Health Organization has designed an instrument to evaluate the quality of life in healthy and sick persons which, unlike other instruments, comprehensively considers the perception of the subject in his physical, psychological, social and environmental dimensions. Objective: to describe the applications of the instrument according to the region and the population under study. Methods: a review of original studies where this instrument was applied and published from 2002 to 2012. Two researchers prepared a research protocol with the search terms, the inclusion and exclusion criteria and the evaluation of the quality of articles to guarantee exhaustiveness and reproducibility. The analysis was based on frequencies and on confidence intervals of 95 % and Z statistic for comparison of proportions. Results: there were identified 1 845 studies from which 548 met the protocol and included 234 414 subjects. In Las Americas, the country with the highest number of publications was Brazil and in the Western Pacific was China. In the research studies of sick people, the population groups with mental disorders (21.1 %), neoplasias (5.8 %) and infectious diseases (8 %), mainly HIV/AIDS, predominated. The research studies on healthy individuals were mainly scale validation and study of risky groups such as the elderly, the unemployed, caregivers of disabled persons, the poor or ethnic minorities and the refugees. Conclusions: the instrument has been used in several countries and populations, which points to the relevance of collecting information from the patient perspective, something useful for epidemiological, observational studies, controlled clinical trials and other research works.

Keywords : quality of life; World Health Organization.

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