TITLE:
Quality of Life in Egyptian Children with Cancer
AUTHORS:
Mohamed Fawzy, Mai Saleh, Mohamed El-Wakil, Zeinab Monir, Eman Eltahlawy
KEYWORDS:
Quality of Life; Children Cancer Patients; PedsQLTM 3.0 Cancer Module
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Cancer Therapy,
Vol.4 No.7,
September
4,
2013
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 PedsQLTM 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.