Quality of Life on Arterial Hypertension: Validity of Known Groups of MINICHAL.

INTRODUCTIONS: In the care of hypertension, it is important that health professionals possess available tools that allow evaluating the impairment of the health-related quality of life, according to the severity of hypertension and the risk for cardiovascular events. Among the instruments developed for the assessment of health-related quality of life, there is the Mini-Cuestionario of Calidad de Vida en la Hipertensión Arterial (MINICHAL) recently adapted to the Brazilian culture.

OBJECTIVE: To estimate the validity of known groups of the Brazilian version of the MINICHAL regarding the classification of risk for cardiovascular events, symptoms, severity of dyspnea and target-organ damage.

METHODS: Data of 200 hypertensive outpatients concerning sociodemographic and clinical information and health-related quality of life were gathered by consulting the medical charts and the application of the Brazilian version of MINICHAL. The Mann-Whitney test was used to compare health-related quality of life in relation to symptoms and target-organ damage. The Kruskal-Wallis test and ANOVA with ranks transformation were used to compare health-related quality of life in relation to the classification of risk for cardiovascular events and intensity of dyspnea, respectively.

RESULTS: The MINICHAL was able to discriminate health-related quality of life in relation to symptoms and kidney damage, but did not discriminate health-related quality of life in relation to the classification of risk for cardiovascular events.

CONCLUSION: The Brazilian version of the MINICHAL is a questionnaire capable of discriminating differences on the health-related quality of life regarding dyspnea, chest pain, palpitation, lipothymy, cephalea and renal damage.