The Turkish Journal of Pediatrics
2013 , Vol 55 , Num 5
Quality of life in children and adolescents with chronic kidney disease: a comparative study between different disease stages and treatment modalities
1Clinics of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and 6Psychiatry, Umraniye Training and Research Hospital, İstanbul,
2Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and 4Pediatric Nephrology Unit, Department of Pediatrics, Hacettepe
University Faculty of Medicine, Ankara, and 3Ministry of Health Ankara Children’s Health and Pediatric Hematology-
Oncology Training and Research Hospital, Ankara, and 5Department of Psychology, Hacettepe University Faculty of Letters,
Ankara, Turkey. E-mail: ecengel@hacettepe.edu.tr
This study aimed to compare the quality of life of children and adolescents
in various stages of their chronic kidney disease (CKD) who were managed
with different treatment modalities to that of children and adolescents without
any chronic disease. The study included 18 renal transplant and 21 dialysis
patients (8 on hemodialysis, 13 on peritoneal dialysis) and 16 patients who
did not yet require renal replacement therapy. The control group consisted
of 37 children without any chronic disease. Psychosocial Health Summary
scores, Physical Health Summary scores, and Total Scale scores of Pediatric
Quality of Life Inventory scores were estimated for the groups. CKD patients
had lower scores in all scales of Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory than the
control group. There were no differences in self-reported scores on the Pediatric
Quality of Life scale scores between treatment groups; however, parents of
the transplant patients had reported higher (more favorable) Physical Health
Summary scores than those of the dialysis patients. Reports of parents and
their children differed only in Physical Health Summary scores in the dialysis
group; self-reports of the children were more favorable. These findings show
that children and adolescents with CKD experience impaired quality of life
on the physical and psychosocial functioning domains in comparison with
healthy controls. The study findings implicate the need for further studies to
investigate the quality of life in CKD patients at different stages as well as
the perceptional differences between pediatric and adolescent CKD patients
and caregiver proxy-reports about their quality of life.
Keywords :
chronic kidney disease, renal failure, quality of life, transplant, dialysis,
non-dialysis-CKD treatment.