Abstract

Introduction: Health-related quality of life is a major issue among patients with Multiple sclerosis (MS). Aim: To explore the effect of fatigue and pain self-efficacy on health-related quality of life among patients with MS. Methods: Between March and May 2018, 85 MS patients from a large Hospital of Athens region completed the questionnaires: a) Missoula-VITAS Quality of Life Index-15, which examines 5 dimensions of quality of life, b) Pain Self Efficacy Questionnaire which measures the pain self-efficacy that an individual perceives, c) Fatigue Assessment Scale (FAS) which measures fatigue, d) a questionnaire about the sociodemographic elements. Statistical analysis was performed using the IBM SPSS Statistics version 21. The significance level was set up to 0.001. Results: Fatigue might predict the dimension of quality of life “Function” while Pain Self-Efficacy might, also, predict the dimension of quality of life “Interpersonal”. A strong correlation was found between the dimensions of quality of life “Well-being” and “Transcendent” and between “Interpersonal” and Pain Self-Efficacy. The total score of fatigue was strongly correlated with Physical Fatigue and very strongly correlated with Mental Fatigue. Conclusion: Fatigue and Pain Self-Efficacy are important predictors of the dimensions of quality of life among patients with MS. Pain in MS has to be taken into serious consideration in every patient with MS.

Key words: fatigue, pain self-efficacy, multiple sclerosis, quality of life.