Quality of life in children newly diagnosed with cancer and their mothers
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Quality of life in children newly diagnosed with cancer and their mothers Christine Eiser*1, J Richard Eiser1 and Christopher B Stride2 Address: 1CR-UK Child and Family Research Group, Department of Psychology, University of Sheffield S10 2TP, UK and 2Institute of Work Psychology, Department of Psychology, University of Sheffield, S10 2TP, UK Email: Christine Eiser* - [email protected]; J Richard Eiser - [email protected]; Christopher B Stride - [email protected] * Corresponding author
Published: 28 April 2005 Health and Quality of Life Outcomes 2005, 3:29
doi:10.1186/1477-7525-3-29
Received: 08 March 2005 Accepted: 28 April 2005
This article is available from: http://www.hqlo.com/content/3/1/29 © 2005 Eiser et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
ChildhoodCancerQuality of lifeproxy ratings.
Abstract Background: With current treatments, approximately 75% of children diagnosed with cancer can expect to achieve disease-free survival. However, treatments are complex and aggressive, potentially compromising QOL for children and their parents. Although previous work has shown increased anxiety and depression among parents after diagnosis, the recent development of standardised measures of QOL enables us to look more directly at the impact of diagnosis on mothers' and children's QOL. The aims of this study are to i) describe QOL for children and their mothers after diagnosis by comparing their scores with population norms, ii) explore the relationship between mothers' worries about the illness and their QOL, and iii) determine the relationship between mothers ratings of their own QOL and their child. Method: A total of 87 families took part, constituting 60% of those eligible. The children included 58 males and 29 females aged between 2 years 6 months to 16 years 3 months (mean = 7 years, median = 5 years 8 months). Diagnoses were acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL, n = 57), brain tumours (n = 11), bone tumours (n = 17) and 2 rare cancers. Mothers completed questionnaires about their own and the child's QOL. Results: Mothers' reported their own and the child's QOL to be significantly lower than population norms. There were significant correlations between mothers' worries and their own and their ratings of the child's QOL and mothers' ratings of their own QOL correlated with their ratings of the child's QOL. Conclusion: Both children and their mothers experience significantly compromised QOL in the months following diagnosis. Mothers who rated their own QOL to be poor also rate their child's QOL to be low. These results suggest caution is required where mothers rate their child's QOL. Efforts must continue to be made to improve QOL of children especially in the period immediately following diagnosis.
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