Leg ulceration and perceived health: a population based case-control study. Age Ageing

Objectives: to quantify the effect of leg ulceration on health-related quality of life and to estimate a health state value for leg ulceration. Design: population based case-control study. Setting: two New Zealand health districts (population 540,468 people). Subjects: 241 people with a leg ulcer of any aetiology, and 224 controls randomly selected from the electoral roll using strati-Wed sampling. Main outcome measures: health-related quality of life as measured by the eight domains of the Short Form 36 question Health Survey, adjusted for age, sex and confounding co-morbidities; the physical component summary and mental compo-nent summary scores of the Short Form 36 question Health Survey standardised for age and sex; preference-based health state value derived from the Short Form 36 question Health Survey. Results: completed Short Form 36 question Health Survey questionnaires were available for 230 cases (95%) and 218 con-trols (97%). Cases reported signiWcantly lower mean scores than controls across all eight domains of the Short Form 36 ques-tion Health Survey (P< 0.0005). Mean domain scores for cases were also signiWcantly lower than population norms. The mean physical component summary score for cases and controls was 45.2 versus 50.1 (P< 0.0001) and the mean mental com