Assessment of Quality of Life in Iranian Asthmatic Children, Young Adults and Their Caregivers

Interest in the impact of illness on day to day function is leading investigators to includeboth disease specific and generic health related quality of life (hr qol) questionnaires in abroad range of clinical studies and to gain a full picture of the impact of asthma on the lives ofchildren with this condition, it is necessary to make direct measurement of health related qualityof life.in response to this need, we used the juniper’s pediatric asthma quality of life questionnaire(paqlq) and juniper’s pediatric asthma caregiver’s quality of life questionnaire (pacqlq)that has been developed based on guidelines for construction of over a dozen validated diseasespecific quality of life instruments.the paqlq consists of 23 items that in children with asthma have been identified astroublesome in their daily lives and pacqlq that contains 13 items in two domains ofemotional and activities disturbances. the study design consisted of an 18 month single cohortstudy. patients participating in the study were 113 children, 7-17 years of age, with a wide rangeof asthma severity and their caregivers. for each patient a paqlq and for each caregiver apacqlq was completed. one week before visit patients recorded morning peak flow rates,medication use and symptoms in a diary. after complete physical examination, for determiningof asthma severity, spirometry was performed.the questionnaires after statically analysis showed good levels of both longitudinal and crosssectional correlations with the conventional asthma indices and with general quality of life. wefound that consistently qol in boys were more disturbed than females, a good relevancybetween severity of asthma and qol scores and more disturbances of qol in caregivers ofmale asthmatic patients than caregivers of female asthmatic patients. we could not find anysignificant relevancy between fev1 percentage of predicted and overall scores of qol. smallerairways, and higher airway resistance and more activity of males than females may explain whyboys have more disturbed life style than females.