Association of social support and health status outcomes in peripheral artery disease.

Objective: A critical goal in the care of patients with peripheral artery disease (PAD) is to optimize their health status; that is, their symptoms, function, and quality of life. Social support has been proposed to be a predictor of disease-specific health status in patients with PAD. However, the prevalence of low perceived social support, the association with health status outcomes, and the interaction with other biopsychosocial variables, is unknown. Our aim was to assess the association of baseline perceived social support with health status at 12 months in patients with PAD.

Methods: The Patient-Centered Outcomes Related Treatment Practices in Peripheral Arterial Disease: Investigating Trajectories (PORTRAIT) registry, which enrolled patients with PAD in the United States, the Netherlands, and Australia from 2011 to 2015, was used. Perceived social support was assessed at baseline with the Enhancing Recovery in Coronary Heart Disease Patients (ENRICHD) Social Support Inventory (ESSI), and disease-specific (Peripheral Artery Disease Questionnaire [PAQ]) and generic health status (Euro-Quality of Life Visual Analog Scale [VAS] and EQ-5D-3L Index) questionnaires were assessed at baseline and 12 months. Low social support was defined as a score of ≤3 on two items and an ESSI score of ≤18. A hierarchical mixed level linear regression model adjusting for biopsychosocial variables was used to assess the association between low perceived social support and the ESSI score with health status at 12 months.

Results: A total of 949 patients were included (mean age, 67.64 ± 9.32 years; 37.9% female), with low social support being present in 18.2%. Patients with low social support were more likely to not be married or to be living alone (50.0% vs 77.5%; P < .001); have more financial constraints; have more depressive, stress, and anxiety symptoms; and have lower disease-specific and generic health status at baseline and at 12 months. In the unadjusted model, low social support was associated with a -7.02 (95% confidence interval [CI], -10.97 to -3.07) point reduction in the PAQ, -7.43 (95% CI, -10.33 to -4.54) in the VAS, and -0.06 (95% CI, -0.09 to -0.03) in the EQ-5D-3L Index. Adjusting for biopsychosocial factors minimally attenuated these associations (PAQ: -6.52; 95% CI, -10.55 to -2.49; P = .002; VAS: -5.39; 95% CI, 8.36 to -2.42; P < .001; EQ-5D-3L Index: -0.04; 95% CI, -0.07 to 0.01; P = .022). The ESSI per-point score was associated with a decrease of 0.51 (95% CI, 0.18-0.85; P = .003) in PAQ and 0.46 (95% CI, 0.12-0.61; P = .004) in the VAS.

Conclusions: Among patients with PAD, low social support was frequent and associated with a lower health status at 1 year independent of other biopsychosocial variables. Improving social support could improve health status and outcomes in PAD.