Does End Stage Renal Disease or Type of Renal Replacement Therapy Affect Marital Relationship in Diabetics? A Preliminary Report

Several studies have assessed marital relationship in patients with different chronic diseases. However, literature lacks data regarding this issue in diabetic patients receiving renal replacement therapy. Here, we report our preliminary findings regarding the differences of marital relationship between diabetics being treated for End-Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) and diabetics with normal kidney function. Mateirlas and Methods: In a case-control study, 94 diabetic patients were divided into three groups ac-cording to renal replacement therapy: group I, renal transplanted subjects (n=38); group II, hemodialysis patients (n=20); group III, diabetics without ESRD (n=36). The groups were matched for gender, age and educational levels. Group I and II were also matched with regard to the duration of ESRD. In-formation on parameters, clinical data, and marital relationship measures was gathered. Marital rela-tionship was evaluated with the Revised Dyadic Ad-justment Scale, which includes four domains of Dy-adic Consensus, Affection Expression, Dyadic Satis-faction and Dyadic Cohesion, with lower scores in-dicating greater impairment in marital relationship. Scores of different subscales were compared be-tween the groups. Results: No significant difference was found be-tween the groups with respect to any of the study subscales. In group I, marital relationship and scores of the four marital quality measures were better in patients without any history of renal graft rejection than subjects with such a history. Conclusion: We did not find any difference regard-ing marital relationship between diabetic patients with and without ESRD. It also seems that the qual-ity of marital relationship is independent of the type of renal replacement therapy.