Relationship between hemodialysis and health-related quality of life: a cross-sectional study of diagnosis and duration of hemodialysis

Background: Hemodialysis is a medical technology implemented for various renal diseases and has a significant budget impact in Japan. Hemodialysis also affects health-related quality of life, as it interferes with daily life, but the effect of diagnosis and duration of hemodialysis is not clear. The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of hemodialysis on health-related quality of life, with a focus on diagnosis and duration of hemodialysis. Methods: We conducted EQ-5D-5L surveys among hemodialysis patients at a single hemodialysis hospital between November 2015 and September 2017 and used a scoring algorithm that was developed in Japan to calculate the scores. Results: A total of 274 subjects without missing data were included in the data analysis. The mean score of the entire group was 0.772 ± 0.215. Compared with other domains, pain/discomfort had the highest percentage of problems (59.1%). There were no differences in the distributions with respect to diagnostic names in any domain. Multiple regression analysis showed that hemodialysis duration was the only explanatory variable that had a mild significant effect on EQ-5D-5L scores, but it was not large. Conclusions: QOL measured using the EQ-5D-5L survey score was not affected by age, gender, or diagnosis but was affected by hemodialysis duration. Future studies are needed to investigate the impact of prolonged hemodialysis on health-related quality of life.