Gender differences in health-related quality of life after percutaneous coronary intervention in patients with acute coronary syndrome

Introduction. Only a few authors conducted comparative analyses of early and late health-related quality of life (HRQoL) depending on gender of patients with acute coronary syndrome (ACS) and discussed the factors affecting the late HRQoL in this group. We hypothesized that women with ACS are characterised by worse long-term (6th month follow-up HRQoL) after percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). To examine the dynamics of changes in HRQoL between the baseline and 6th month follow-up after ACS, depending on gender, and to determine sociodemographic and clinical predictors at baseline, which may have an impact on 6 th month follow-up assessment of HRQoL. Material and methods. The study included 140 consecutive patients (70 women and 70 men) with ACS who were sub- jected to PCI. The patients were divided depending on gender: group I (n = 70) — women with ACS without ST elevation (NSTEMI; n = 14) and those with ST elevation (STEMI; n = 56); group II (n = 70) — men with ACS without ST elevation (NSTEMI; n = 9) and those with ST elevation (STEMI; n = 61). HRQoL was assessed two times (at baseline and 6 th month follow-up) of Short Form 36 (SF-36) questionnaire, and the effect of sociodemographic and clinical factors on physical (PCS) and mental (MCS) component summary scores was evaluated. Results. Compared to men, women presented with significantly lower PCS and MCS scores, both at baseline and at 6th month-follow-up. On univariate analysis, significantly lower PCS scores were observed among women, patients older than 70 years, physically inactive, not smoking, retired, and diagnosed with depressive symptoms. In contrast, we did not reveal any significant effects of the analysed variables on MCS on univariate analysis. The multivariate stepwise logistic regression analysis identified female gender and age > 70 as significant predictors of 6 th month follow-up HRQoL in both PCS and MCS of SF-36. Moreover, marital status, and depression turned out to negatively affect the HRQoL in PCS. Ad- justed odds ratio revealed that women were at three- and two-fold greater risk of decreased PCS and MCS, respectively. Conclusions. Among the patients with ACS, women showed lower HRQoL than men, both at baseline and at 6th month fol- low-up. Both women and men showed improvement in PCS at 6 th month follow-up but MCS improvement was observed only for women. The significant baseline predictors of 6 th month follow-up HRQoL were female gender, age and marital status.