Patient Reported Outcomes and Work-related Quality of Life of Heart Failure Patients Using Anticoagulants

This study was designed to assess patient reported outcomes and work-related quality of life of heart failure patients using anticoagulants. This cross-sectional study was done for 5 months (June 2021 to October 2021). Convenient sampling of 117 heart failure patients following up at an outpatient cardiology clinic was done and the patients were selected according to inclusion and exclusion criteria. Minnesota Living Heart Failure Questionnaire (MLHFQ) and purpose-designed data collection form were interviewer-administered to all eligible patients. Sociodemographic and clinical data were obtained from the records of the patients and through interview. Data analysis was done by SPSS ver. 25 using descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. The results showed statistically significant at p < 0.05. The majority of the heart failure patients were male and more than 36 years old. Mostly were non-smoker, unemployed and living with family. Nearly all patients were diagnosed with heart failure from 4 years and fall under NYHA class 2. Majority of the studied patients had more than 3 comorbidities. The common comorbidities were hyperten-sion, diabetes mellitus, dyslipidemia, kidney disease. The majority of them were prescribed with 5 to 6 medications at a time. The mean total score for MLHFQ was 69.09 ± 20.60 indicated poor work-related quality of life. Focusing on the sub-scale score, the domain of physical (M = 3.45, SD = 1.15) were slightly lower than the emotional (M = 3.51, SD = 1.03) domain. Among 76 heart failure patients, around 31 (40.8%) were on warfarin, 12 (15.8%) on dabigatran, 23 (30.8%) on rivaroxaban and 10 (13.2%) on apixaban. Heart failure undoubtedly has a noteworthy negative impact on patients’ reported outcomes and work-related quality of life among heart failure patients especially when they are on anticoagulants.