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Quality of life in children and adolescents with beta thalassemia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 August 2024

A. Tsagkou
Affiliation:
1Greek Health System
E. Evangelou
Affiliation:
2University of West Attica, Athens, Greece
E. Vlachou
Affiliation:
2University of West Attica, Athens, Greece
A. Zartaloudi*
Affiliation:
2University of West Attica, Athens, Greece
E. Dousis
Affiliation:
2University of West Attica, Athens, Greece
C. Dafogianni
Affiliation:
2University of West Attica, Athens, Greece
M. Polikandrioti
Affiliation:
2University of West Attica, Athens, Greece
I. Koutelekos
Affiliation:
2University of West Attica, Athens, Greece
*
*Corresponding author.

Abstract

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Introduction

Children and adolescents with thalassemia suffer from chronicity of the disease and its treatment, including transfusion dependence and complications of iron overload.

Objectives

To investigate the quality of life of children and adolescents with Beta Thalassaemia.

Methods

This study is a cross-sectional study conducted at the Greek public Children’s Hospital. PedsQL ™ 4.0 Generic Core Scale (Greek version) was used to evaluate HRQOL in 41 thalassemia patients aged between 5 and 18 years and in 41 healthy controls of the same age range. For the analysis, the Statistic Package (SPSS ver.24) was used. Using Spearman’s correlation coefficient, t-test and MannWhitney tests were used, while for variables with three or more levels the Anova and Kruskall-Wallis. In order to investigate the relationship between two quantitative variables, Spearman’s correlation coefficient was used, while the relationship between two qualitative variables was used to control x2. As a statistical significance level, α = 5% was defined.

Results

Of the 41 children with beta Thalassemia who participated in the study, 48.8% (n = 20) were boys and 51.2% (n = 21) girls. The mean age of children was 10.02 ± 4.10 years. For healthy children who participated in the study 51.2% (n = 21) were boys while 48.8% (n = 20) were girls. The mean age of the children was 9.63 ± 3.77 years. Children with Beta Thalassaemia have a lower quality of life in Physical Health and Activity(<0,001), Emotional Health(0,031), School Activities(0,008), Psychosocial Health(0,014), and the overall PedsQL 4.0 (<0,001)questionnaire compared to healthy children. Children between the ages of 5 and 7 have higher levels of quality of life in physical health and activity than older children(<0,001). In addition, children aged 5 to 7 have higher quality of life and overall PedsQL 4.0 score than older children(0,033) Children receiving combination therapy show better quality of life than children receiving subcutaneous therapy (total PedsQL 4.0 <0,001).

Conclusions

Children and adolescents in all five categories had a better quality of life, after improved iron chelating methods and other psychosocial interventions.

Disclosure of Interest

None Declared

Type
Abstract
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of European Psychiatric Association
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