Study of patient satisfaction with thyroid hormone replacement therapy in patients with hypothyroidism

Abstract

Background: Dissatisfaction with the treatment is a common health problem among all patients on regular treatment which may lead to incompliance, poor quality of life (QOL), psychological problems, and even failure of treatment. Such problem has been reported frequently with Levothyroxine (L4) treatment of hypothyroid patients and lead to the search for alternatives to the gold standard treatment with L4. Objective: We aim at assessing patient satisfaction among hypothyroid patients on thyroid hormone replacement therapy (THRT) at Diabetes & endocrinology Unit, Internal Medicine Department, Minia University Hospital. Methods: In this cross-sectional study 100 patients were included all of them were confirmed hypothyroid cases on L4 treatment aging from 18 to 60 years of both sex, pregnant females and patients with other comorbidities were excluded, we applied a personal interviewer questionnaire designed and tested by the British Thyroid Foundation (BTF) on outpatient hypothyroid patients. Results: We found a relatively high percent of incompliance to L4 treatment (16%) of our studied sample, most of our patients depended on their doctors as the main source of information. The majority of our studied patients were moderately satisfied with their L4 treatment; subjects were offered a score (from 0 to 6) where 0 meant dissatisfied and 6 meant very satisfied. All of the 11 questions in the main questionnaire had a mean answer above 3, and a median (IQR) of 4(3-5). Conclusion: our study suggests that most of hypothyroid patient are moderately satisfied with their L4 treatment with relative high prevalence of incompliance.