الفهرس 
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Abstract
Summary
The present study aimed to assess the Quality of life among elderly patients with CLDs. who were hospitalized in El-Rajhy Liver Hospital at Assiut university (inpatient ward). The total number of the studied sample was 385 elderly patients attending the previously mentioned settings during nine months (from the 1st of December /2019: to the end of September /2020).
Two tools were used in this study; the first one was Structured Interview Questionnaire that consisted of 3 parts: The 1st part was included socio-demographic characteristics as, age, sex, residence, marital status, occupation, and level of education, etc. The 2nd part was for the elderly’s past and present medical history of chronic liver diseases such as a family history of the disease, smoking …etc. The 3rd part was used to measure the Patients’ knowledge about chronic liver diseases. Which included knowledge about the meaning of chronic liver diseases, signs &symptoms, causes, risk factors, complications of the disease.
The second tool was chronic Liver Disease Questionnaire (CLDQ) that was used to measure the quality of life for patients. CLDQ was developed by (Younossi et al., 1999). It is the first specific instrument for measuring QoL in chronic liver diseases (Zandi et al, 2005). The CLDQ included 29 items in the following domains: abdominal symptoms, fatigue, systemic symptoms, activity, emotional function and worry. It has 7 Likert’s scale type of answers ranging from ”all of the time” to ”none of the time” possible range 29–203 from worst to best QoL.
Methods: - An official letter of approval was obtained from the dean of the Faculty of Nursing to director of Al-Rajhy Liver Hospital at Assiut University to conduct the study. The letter included a permission to carry out the study and explained the purpose and nature of the study. The pilot study was carried out before the starting of data collection on 35 elderly patients. Individual interviews with the elderly were carried out. Each interview took about 30-40 minutes. The data of the current study were collected over a period of 10 months, from the 1st of December 2019 and ended on the 30th of September 2020, 3 days per week and the number which was interviewed was 4-5 elderly patients per day. The prolonged period of data collection was due to the closure of the in patient’s wards from 7|4|2020 till 15|8|2020 because of spread of the Corona virus.
The main results of the present study were:
Less than two thirds of the studied sample aged (60<65) years and more than one third of them aged 70 or older, about two-thirds of the studied sample were females. It was observed that more than two fifths of the elderly participants could only read and write and more than one quarter of them were illiterate and more than two fifths of them were from rural areas.
According to the total quality of life domains score, it was revealed that 27.5% of the studied sample had mild impairment, with a measure of <50% in Quality of life score, while 55.1% were moderate impairment those who measured (50-75%) in Quality of life score and 17.4 % sever impairment who had >75% in quality of life score.
It was noticed that chronic liver disease was more common in males than females as more than two thirds of the studied sample were males
It could be concluded that chronic liver diseases have significant negative impact on the QOL among elderly patients in relation to the abdominal symptoms, fatigue, systemic symptoms, activity and emotional function. Therefore, the following recommendations were suggested: -
Screening for all individuals above the age of 60 years for early detection of chronic liver diseases.
Designed health educational programs should provide to elderly to increase their knowledge about factors attributed with CLDs as: causes, risk factors, treatment, and complications of CLDs can guide actions to reduce and prevent occurrence of disease.
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Improving the Quality of life for patients with CLDs by encouraging social activities.
Training of health professionals & primary health care providers regarding the approach to CLDs, methods of evaluation, early diagnosis, knowledge about the risk factors, causes, complications prevention, and promoting improvements in the wellbeing and quality of life.