A quality of life in chronic combat related posttraumatic stress disorder--a study on Croatian War veterans

The main objective of this study was to examine an association of various symptoms in chronic combat-related post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and the quality of life in this population. 248 Croatian male war veterans all diagnosed with chronic PTSD were consecutively enrolled in this study as they showed up at the routine check-up. They were given self report questionnaires Trauma Symptom Inventory (TSI-A) evaluating different PTSD symptoms and WHO Quality of Life-BREF assessing four different domains of the quality of life. After independent sample t- test was performed, the presence of each symptom defined by Trauma Symptom Inventory indicated the impairment of all four quality of life domains in a group of subject suffering from it, except of intrusive experience not being associated with the lesser quality in social domain. All quality of life domains were significantly correlated with various PTSD symptoms; however Pearson correlation factors ranged from small to medium value. As expected, PTSD symptoms are associated with lesser quality of life in the affected population. The further research is needed to show possible causal relationship between PTSD and, especially, physical health of these patients.