Quality of Life in Hypertensives and Normotensives in Israel: Introducing a Self-Structured Subjective Measure

Summary

The objective of the present report was to introduce and evaluate a new, qualitative, self-structured measure of quality of life (QOL) as part of a battery of instruments measuring this concept. The study compared the pre- and post-treatment evaluation of 268 men between the ages of 40 and 65 with mild hypertension, randomly allocated to one of three treatment groups in a double-blind design, with evaluations of 155 normotensive subjects who were matched for age and level of education. The groups were treated with two antihypertensive drugs, Isradipine and Methyldopa, in addition to a placebo.

We found that the new measure showed both internal reliability and construct validity. When spouses and physicians were asked about the patients’ QOL, we found that they were only in moderate agreement with the patients’ own definition of their QOL.

We found that the normotensives have better QOL than the hypertensives on most pre-structured measures. They also view health issues as less important than the hypertensive patients. Both groups view family values as the most important aspect of their QOL. It is suggested that this result might be idiosyncratic to a Jewish society, where family values are considered of great importance; further cross-cultural research will answer whether this is true for other societies as well.