Fourteen of the 24 published studies compared QOL in adults with ConHD to a healthy [14, 21, 33] or community [19, 21–24, 27, 28, 32, 36] control group or to other patient populations without ConHD [15, 16]. Four studies found that QOL is worse in patients with ConHD as compared to control subjects [14, 15, 19, 21], whereas three studies concluded that QOL is similar in patients and controls [16, 22, 33]. Further, three studies even found a better QOL in patients with ConHD as compared to a control group [24, 27, 36]. Additionally, three studies examined the scores on different subscales of QOL (i.e. SF-36) and found both significantly lower and significantly higher scores in patients with ConHD as compared to controls on different subscales of QOL, as well as no differences between both groups for certain subscales [23, 28, 32]. Finally, one study found that women with ConHD had worse QOL than control subjects, while men with ConHD did not differ in terms of QOL from controls [20]. The fact that the results are inconsistent could be due to methodological limitations and differences among the studies.

Knowledge of the factors contributing to QOL is of utmost importance in order to improve the effects of therapy and treatment. Sixteen of the 24 studies published on QOL in ACHD examined potential determinants of QOL [14–16, 18–20, 24, 27–30, 33–35, 37, 38]. Table 7.2 provides an overview of the potential determinants of QOL that were investigated.