Life Quality Indicators of Rheumatoid Arthritis Patients With and Without Concomitant Ischemic Heart Disease

The aim – to assess life quality (LQ) in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients with andwithout concomitant coronary heart disease (CHD).Material and methods. 91 patients with RA were examined. The average age was 44.7 ±9.4 years. The duration of the disease is from 1 to 12 years. The first X-ray stage - in 4.2%of patients, II - 49.5%, III - in 40.0% and IV - in 5.3% of patients. Seropositive RA wasfound in 73.7%. The first degree of activity is in 21 patients, II - in 38. Patients with RAare divided into 2 subgroups - patients with RA and RA with coronary heart disease. Thegroups are comparable in age and sex. LQ assessment was performed using SF-36 andHAQ questionnaires. Control group consisted of 31 patients with coronary heart disease.Results. Patients with RA and RA, accompanied with coronary heart disease gaveapproximately the same assessment of their pain before admission to the hospital (64.8± 13.2 and 69.1 ± 11.1 mm, respectively). The general condition of patients with RA,accompanied with coronary heart disease, was considered to be 25.1% more severecompared with RA patients without coronary heart disease (69.7 ± 6.39 mm vs. 55.7 ± 4.27mm, p <0.05). When assessing pain and general condition of patients of different ages,no significant difference was found. Depending on the disease duration in the subgroupsof patients with RA up to 5 years and over 10 years, there is a tendency to a slightlyhigher assessment of pain for VAS compared to the group of patients suffering from thisdisease from 5 to 10 years. The HAQ analysis revealed a significant difference in RApatients with and without coronary heart disease (p <0.05). The constituents of рhysicalcomponent score (PCS) tended to be decreased in patients with comorbid pathology, butthe constituents of the mental component score (MCS) probably differed in patients with acombination of RA with coronary heart disease, both from data, obtained in patients withRA, and from the values of patients with coronary heart disease.Conclusions. Patients with comorbid RA and coronary heart disease are characterizedby a lower assessment of their own health. Comorbidity of RA with coronary heart diseasehas less effect on the physical component of patients' health, but significantly impairs themental component of health.