Abstract
Pakistan is among those countries of South Asia that have concentrated prevalence of Anemia. The outcome complications of Anemia are quite adversative such as maternal and infant mortality, infertility in child bearing age, quality of life as this may impair the daily life functioning of an individual due to limited activity patterns thus affecting the work capacity. Therefore, this study has been designed to juxtapose quality of life and symptomatic complaints’ severity in anemic patients across gender. A quantitative comparative analysis through cross sectional research design was used to collect the data. The sample of 300 patients was taken from Hematology Outpatient Clinics of Lahore between June, 2018 and October, 2018. The scales were standardized and carried intact psychometric properties including demographic sheet, Health Survey Form (HSF-36) and Quality of Life, computed by accumulating scores from health domains form. There were marked gender differences in clinical complaints and reported quality of life in patients with anemia. There was Beta anemia-related difficulties, symptoms’ severity, pulsating pains, spasmodic exhaustions, and impaired daily life activities or restricted activity patterns that were evident more among females than males. This is pertinent to mention that males had active lifestyles with frequent reports of exercises than females. Pakistani females with anemia recounted poorer social support, tended to evaluate them in miserable states, and went through more transfusions. In short, this study discloses that Pakistani females with iron deficiency anemia report poorer quality of life, tend to maintain more health-related complications and experience greater symptoms severity than their male counterparts. This is implicated that psycho-education of healthful measures and by practitioners giving greater consideration to addressal of symptoms, quality of life of such patients can be improved.
