Quality of Life in Patients with ICD: Is It Improved or Worsened?

Abstract

‘Quality of life’ has different meanings and entails different components, depending on the perspective of the investigator and the intention of any analysis. Although there is no exact definition of quality of life, there is an emerging consensus that quality-of-life assessment can be based on physical condition, psychological wellbeing, social activity, and everyday activity. These categories can then be further subdivided into a number of aspects such as mobility, self- care, family contact, intimacy, or negativity in terms of depression or anxiety. The approach to quality of life, therefore, must be multidimensional and involve a variety of investigatory tools (Table 1). The usefulness of many trials dealing with quality of life is limited by their unidimensional approach focusing only on restricted issues, e.g., functional status, excluding mental or psychological aspects or psychological features, leaving aside functional capacity. Future investigations of quality of life, moreover, will have to address a variety of health-associated sectors, including costs, working capacity, and social care, in addition to physical and mental integrity, since invasive therapies cause manifold interactions between the individual and the environment and vice versa. Quality-of-life research should, therefore, use an analytic model and comprehensively include predictors and response variables in a given time-frame in which the impact of therapy on quality of life is elicited [1].