Background

Health-related quality of life (HRQoL) questionnaires explore aspects of patients? lives that assess physical, mental and social well-being, which are not usually covered by other diagnostic tools. They should be sensible to changes related to progression of disease or treatment interventions and have predictive purposes.

Aims

The aim of this study was to evaluate whether the HRQoL has a prognostic value for mortality at 5 years in home mechanical ventilation (HMV) patients.

Methods

Five-year longitudinal cohort study conducted in an outpatient ventilation clinic using the Severe Respiratory Insufficiency (SRI) questionnaire at inclusion and status (alive/dead) at 5 years.

Results

A total of 104 patients were included (male 56.7%, median age 69 [61;77] years). Almost half of the
patients had COPD (49.0%). Patients were on HMV for a median of 43.5 [22;85.5] months, with overall good adherence (median 8 [6;9] daily hours). Fifty-seven (54.8%) patients were alive at 5 years.

Differences in SRI in survivors and deceased patients are shown in the following Table. 

We found an area under the ROC curve (AUROC) of 0.663, 95% CI [0.557; 0.768] with a cut-off by Youden method of 56.2 (specificity 0.421, sensitivity of 0.702).

Conclusions

The results suggest SRI can be of important prognostic value and help predict the terminal phase of the disease course in patients with long-term HMV.