Gender Disparities in Quality of Life Among Chronic Liver Disease Patients: A Meta-Analysis
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Keywords
Quality of Life, Health-Related Quality of life, Chronic Liver Disease, liver disease, Healthcare Disparities
Abstract
Introduction: Chronic liver diseases have a high prevalence among males and females in the world. It affects the quality of life of the patients. The chronic liver disease questionnaire is an instrument consisted of 6 domains developed in 1999 to measure the quality of life in chronic liver diseases. Objectives: To compare the quality of life between males and females in chronic liver diseases using the chronic liver disease questionnaire. Methods: We searched PubMed, Google Scholar, and Embase through February 2024 for studies that compared the quality of life in chronic liver disease between males and females using the chronic liver disease questionnaire. Effect sizes are reported as the variance of the mean difference and the mean difference values. We used the PRISMA checklist to report our results. Sensitivity analysis was performed to detect any study that had a high impact on our overall results. Results: We analyzed data from 8 studies with 6846 total number of patients. Women showed a significant worse quality of life than men in 5 domains of the chronic liver disease questionnaire. These domains are abdominal symptoms, systemic symptoms, activity, emotional functioning, and worry. There was no significant difference in the fatigue measurement between males and females. The overall score shows a significant difference between the two groups with a mean difference of 0.32 (95% confidence interval, 0.14 to 0.49). Conclusion: This study reveals that women with chronic liver disease suffer a significantly worse quality of life than men, particularly in areas such as abdominal symptoms, systemic symptoms, activity, emotional functioning, and worry. No significant difference was found in the fatigue domain. These insights underscore the urgent need for gender-specific interventions to enhance the quality of life for women battling chronic liver disease.
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