This is a study on the structural model that aims to build a path model of multivariates affecting the quality of health-related living for liver cirrhosis patients and specify causal relations affecting the quality of health-related living for liver cirrhosis patients. The research was conducted in 244 patients diagnosed with liver cirrhosis by physicians and the data were collected with the approval of the Institutional Review Board (IRB) at C University Hospital in the region of D from July 2013 to January 2014. The collected data were analyzed using IBM SPSS 19.0 and AMOS 21.0 statistical programs. The hypothetical model in this study hypothesized that social support would affect anxiety, depression, the functional status, perceived health, and the quality of health-related living and that anxiety and depression would affect the functional status, perceived health, and the quality of health-related living, the functional status would affect perceived health and the quality of health-related All the fit indexes of the path model properly met the assessment criteria. First, anxiety, depression, functional status, and perceived health directly affected the quality of health-related living for liver cirrhosis patients and anxiety, depression, and functional status directly affected perceived health. Social support, anxiety, and depression directly affected the functional status. Second, social support indirectly affected perceived health and the quality of health-related living through anxiety and depression, which indirectly affected perceived health through the functional status. The functional status indirectly affected the quality of health-related living through perceived health, while anxiety and depression indirectly affected the quality of health-related living through perceived health, which was statistically significant. This study has a limitation that it failed to segment severity of the condition. On the basis of these results, therefore, it is necessary to segment severity of liver cirrhosis in testing its direct and indirect effects on the quality of health-related living for patients with the condition. Further research needs to examine the effects on the quality of health-related living for liver cirrhosis patients in more diverse and comprehensive ways.
This study confirmed specifically and systematically through a structural model that social support, anxiety, depression, the functional status, and perceived health were the primary factors affecting the quality of health-related living for liver cirrhosis patients; it is expected that a path model will not only be more accessible in making an intervention program based on support of family or the medical staff and in testing its effectiveness in solving psychological and emotional problems of liver cirrhosis patients in clinical practice but also will possibly be used as an assessment tool.