Despite strong recommendations to assess quality of life in pulmonary arterial hypertension patients from the World Symposia on Pulmonary Hypertension (WSPH) in 2018 and 2024, and from the 2022 European Society of Cardiology (ESC) and European Respiratory Society (ERS) joint pulmonary hypertension guidelines, this evaluation remains rarely implemented in clinical practice.
This cross-sectional study of the real-life use of validated quality of life questionnaires in patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension in Spain, published in European Journal of Cardiovascular Nursing, determines how often quality of life was assessed at diagnosis. Researchers analyzed 3,628 pulmonary arterial hypertension patients and found that quality of life assessment was extremely low, performed in only 2.1% of patients diagnosed between 2007-2018 and 1% of patients diagnosed between 2019-2023
When quality of life tools were used, generic questionnaires like Short Form-36 were more commonly employed than disease-specific tools designed for pulmonary arterial hypertension. Disease-specific questionnaires such as Cambridge Pulmonary Hypertension Outcome Review (CAMPHOR), emPHasis-10, and Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension-Symptom and Impact (PAH-SYMPACT) were rarely utilized.
Read more at this link on the European Journal of Cardiovascular Nursing
Summary by Suzanne Lea, AfPH volunteer
Citation
Ada D M Carmona Segovia, Víctor M Becerra-Muñoz, María Josefa Jiménez Arjona, Virginia Naranjo Velasco, Nuria Ochoa, Joan Albert Barberà, Manuel López-Meseguer, José Miguel Morales Asencio, Isabel Blanco, Pilar Escribano Subías, on behalf of REHAP investigators, Real-life use of validated quality of life questionnaires in patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension in Spain. A cross-sectional study, European Journal of Cardiovascular Nursing, 2025; zvaf108, https://doi.org/10.1093/eurjcn/zvaf108
