Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome and atrioventricular nodal re-entry tachycardia in a Swedish population: consequences on health-related quality of life.
Living with paroxysmal supraventricular tachycardia affects a patient's whole life situation, but few studies have addressed health-related quality of life (HRQOL) aspects in these patients. The aim was therefore to describe HRQOL in patients with atrioventricular nodal re-entry tachycardia (AVNRT) or Wolff-Parkinson-White (WPW) syndrome, referred for radiofrequency ablation (RF-ablation), compared to age- and gender-matched Swedish reference groups.
HRQOL was assessed with SF-36 and EuroQol (EQ-5D and EQ-VAS) and the patients were asked disease-specific questions.
The 97 patients with AVNRT [53 +/- 16 years of age/65 women] and 79 patients with WPW [42 +/- 15 years of age/26 women] exhibited significantly lower HRQOL scores in SF-36 in the same seven of the eight scales: Physical functioning (PF), role-physical (RP), social functioning (SF), role-emotional (RE), general health (GH), vitality (VT), and mental health (MH) while there was no difference in bodily pain (BP) compared to their respective age- and gender matched Swedish reference group. HRQOL scores were lower for patients with AVNRT compared to WPW in the areas of PF (P