Short-term follow-up of Quality-of-Life in interventionally treated patients with post-thrombotic syndrome after deep venous occlusion

Abstract

Introduction Treatment of deep venous occlusive disease is gaining popularity, although the results and outcomes of various techniques are yet to be fully studied. Quality-of-Life (QoL) improvement is a valid and important outcome in medicine, but no specific QoL instruments for deep venous pathology exist up until now. We assessed the short term QoL effects of treated patients with post thrombotic syndrome after deep venous occlusion. Materials and methods Patients with proven venous occlusive disease referred to the outpatient clinic of our department of Venous Surgery in the Maastricht University Medical Centre were included. After inclusion, patients were treated by PTA and stenting and when indicated an endophlebectomy was performed and an AV fistula was made. QoL was assessed with the disease specific VEINES-QOL/Sym and the generic SF-36 questionnaires preoperatively at baseline and postoperatively at 3 and 12 months. Results 61 patients completed the 3 month follow-up period and 28 patients the 12 month follow-up period. VEINES-QOL and Sym scores improved after 3 months: 17.5 points for QOL (p = < 0.001) and 21.4 points for Sym (p = < 0.001)) and after 12 months 18.8 points for QOL (p = 0.004) and 21.3 points for Sym (p = 0.003)). The SF-36 scores improved significantly in the domains “physical functioning”, “role physical” and “bodily pain”. Conclusions Treating deep venous occlusive disease leads to short-term improvement of both disease specific QoL as well as generic QoL scores. Larger long-term follow-up studies are needed to corroborate these results.