Quality of Life in Egyptian Children with Cancer

Mohamed Fawzy, Mai Saleh, Mohamed El-Wakil, Zeinab Monir, Eman Eltahlawy

Department of Child Health, National Research Center, Cairo, Egypt.
Department of Clinical Oncology, Faculty of Medicine, Beni-Suef University, Beni-Suef, Egypt.
Department of Environmental and Occupational Medicine, National Research Center, Cairo, Egypt.
Department of Pediatric Oncology, National Cancer Institute, Cairo University, Cairo, Egypt.

DOI: 10.4236/jct.2013.47148                

Abstract

Background and Objectives: Cancer treatments leading to increased survival rates are reported to participate in the creation of debilitating physical and psychosocial deficits for cancer survivors. Measures of health-related quality of life (HRQOL) are designed to tap such consequences of cancer treatment together with the impact of the disease itself. Methods: Parents of 67 included patients aged 8 - 12 years, were asked to complete the parent proxy report of PedsQL^TM 3.0 Cancer Module (Arabic version), as well as a separate sheet for socio-demographic data. Results: The ratio of Males to females was 1.8:1 among study patients with a median age of 8 years at diagnosis. Hematological malignancies represented 70.1% of the sample, with the highest proportion for ALL (52.2%). Total QOL showed to be relatively low with mean value of 62.29 for the whole group. Subscales with least scores were for; worry (44.11), perceived physical appearance (50.6), and procedural anxiety (55.34). On the other hand, the best score was 75.98 for communication, followed by 72.63 for cognitive problems. The impacts of some medical and socio-demographic variables on QOL and its subscales were elicited in our results. Conclusion: Increased treatment intensity, long duration of hospital admission, higher frequency of hospital visits, female sex, younger age at diagnosis, and large family size were all associated with a poorer total QOL and/or its subscales among Egyptian pediatric cancer patients.

Keywords

Quality of Life; Children Cancer Patients; PedsQL^TM 3.0 Cancer Module

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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