OBESIDADE MÓRBIDA: QUALIDADE DE VIDA E ACESSIBILIDADE.

Abstract

Obesity is, nowadays, one of the major epidemiological challenges of the XXI century. It is considered a chronic disease, characterized by the excessive accumulation of body fat.The morbid obesity defined by the BMI greater than or equal to 40 kg/m2 is related to the occurrence of comorbities, which can cause losses in quality of life (QOL).The present study aimed to assess the quality of life and investigate accessibility issues faced by people with morbid obesity, users of the Unified Health System, in Jataí, Goias. This research was divided into two studies, the first to evaluate the QOL of morbidly obese people, characterize the socioeconomic profile, and analyze the influence of the variables age, gender, BMI classification, education and economic class quality life, and the second to understand the experience lived by morbidly obese people as accessibility, exploring aspects related to the environment, autonomy and security. Fifty people attended to the research, mostly female, aged 20 to 69 years, high school education level and economic class C. The instruments used were the Economic Classification Criterion Brazil, the questionnaires WHOQOL-Brefand SF-36, the semi-structured interview and clinical records. The results for the quantitative analysis indicated that the lowest mean score of QOL scores were the domains general health (50.94%) of the SF-36 and the environment (53.06%) of the WHOQOL-Bref. In the analysis of the influence of the variables age, gender, BMI classification, education and economic status in quality of life were found statistically significant differences, through the WHOQOLBref, the field environment both for the analysis of quality of life and education (p = 0.008) and for quality of life and economic class (p = 0.004).In the SF-36, significant differences were found between quality of life and functional capacity in the field age (p = 0.003), and between quality of life and physical domains in gender (p = 0.027), pain (p = 0.007), social aspects (p = 0.040) and mental health (p = 0.007).In the other variables significant associations were not found (p> .05). Regarding the qualitative data emerged five final categories: impaired daily activities, problems with the environmental space and services, impacts of spatial restrictions on inter-social relationships, coping with stress and demands for social inclusion. Knowing the difficulties of these people is important for improving public policy, providing behavior change, define projects of more accessible environments, thus offering equal opportunity recreation, transportation, healthcare, enabling improvements in quality of life.