Quality of Life and its Associated Factors among Patients with Lower Limb Osteoarthritis

Osteoarthritis is a degenerative joint condition. Osteoarthritis is one of the significant contributors to years lived with disability among the musculoskeletal conditions. In 2019, about 528 million people worldwide were living with osteoarthritis; an increase of 113% since 1990. About 73% of people living with osteoarthritis are older than 55 years, and 60% were female.1 Around 23.46 million individuals in India had osteoarthritis in 1990; this increased to 62.35 million in 2019. The age-standardized prevalence of osteoarthritis has increased from 4,895 in 2019, per 100,000 persons. Similarly, disability-adjusted life years due to osteoarthritis increased from 0.79 million to 2.12 million. While age-standardized disability-adjusted life years increased from 164 to 180 per 100,000 persons from 1990 to 2019. Osteoarthritis was the 20th most common cause of years lived with disabilities in India in 2019, accounting for 1.48 % of all years lived with disability; increasing from 23rd most common cause in 1990.2 The present study was intended to find out the quality of life (QOL) and associated factors among patients with lower limb Osteoarthritis.The study was aimed to assess the QOL of patients with lower limb Osteoarthritis and to find the associated factors of QOL of patients with lower limb Osteoarthritis. A descriptive cross-sectional design was adopted for the study. Every consecutive case of lower limb Osteoarthritis, who meet inclusion criteria, attending Orthopaedics Out Patient Department, T.D Medical College Hospital, Alappuzha were selected as sample in this study. Data were collected by interview, biophysiological measurements and clinical record review. The study finding showed the mean age of patients with lower limb Osteoarthritis was 60.08 years and majority (83.5%) of patients were females. Majority (88.8 %) of patients with lower limb Osteoarthritis had primary Osteoarthritis and in 72.4 % patients knee joints were involved. More than three quarters (81.2 %) of patients with lower limb Osteoarthritis had moderate pain on lower limbs, and 18.8 % of patients had severe pain on lower limbs. Majority (87.64 %) of patients had poor QOL and 12.35 % of patients had good QOL. Most of (95.9 %) patients with lower limb Osteoarthritis had poor QOL in physical domain and in mental domain more than half (57.6 %) of patients with lower limb Osteoarthritis had good QOL. Linear logistic regression analysis revealed that, the QOL of patients with lower limb Osteoarthritis is 3.06 times poor among patients with severe pain on lower limb when compared to patients with moderate pain.