BACKGROUND: Health-Related Quality of Life Questionnaires (HRQOL) are humanistic outcome measure instruments both in clinical and in pharmacoeconomic studies. However, they should have their psychometric parameters evaluated so as to reflect the individual subjective assessment of quality of life. OBJECTIVES: To describe the quality of life profile of hypertensive patients and to assess the concurrent validity of the Minichal-Brazil instrument by comparing it to the generic World Health Organization's (WHO) assessment instrument known as WHOQOL-Bref. METHODS: A total of 191 adult patients (72.8% females) with hypertension were interviewed. Approximately one third of these patients had their hypertension controlled. The mean HRQOL as measured by the total Minichal score was 69.7 (SD = 19.2; 95%CI from 66.9 to 72.4); the "mental status" domain and "somatic manifestations" domain scores were 69.1 (95%CI from 66.1 to 72.2), and 69.9 (95%CI from 66.5 to 73.2), respectively. The means for the WHOQOL-Bref instrument were: in the "physical" domain = 61.5 (95%CI from 59.0 to 64.1); in the "psychological" domain = 65.7 (95%CI from 63.2 to 68.2); in the "social" domain = 72.3 (95%CI from 70.0 to 74.5); and in the "environment" domain = 59.7 (95%CI from 57.7 to 61.7). RESULTS: Minichal significantly correlated (p<0.001) with WHOQOL-Bref as regards all its domains, except for the "environment" domain, which did not correlate with the "somatic manifestations" domain. CONCLUSION: Minichal-Brazil proved to be a useful tool in the assessment of HRQOL in hypertensive patients.
Hypertension; quality of life; evaluation studies; cross-sectional studies; questionnaires
