Evaluating quality of life in patients with sickle cell disease: Differences between adults and children

Abstract

Sickle cell anemia is one of the most common inherited diseases worldwide. It is believed that quality of life (QoL) of the sickle cell patient is very low and that in its general socio-economic conditions and cultural well indicate lack in several aspects. The objective this study was to describe and analyze the QoL of patients with sickle cell anemia In a Hematology clinic of a teaching hospital in Southeastern Brazil. This is a cross-sectional study with application of the WHOQOL-BREF instrument, on the four domains, in adults (group 1) and children (group 2) carriers of sickle cell anemia. In the calculation of differences between proportions was employed the chi-square test. To check for differences between the means was used the Student t test for independent samples. For analysis of association between variables, we used prevalence ratio (PR) with its confidence interval at 95% (CI 95%), as estimates of magnitude. A significance level of 5% was considered in all analysis. In group 1 were selected 27 patients (54%) with mean age of 27.2 years old and 58.3% female, while in group 2 were 23 children(46%) whose mean age was 8.7 years old, with 57.1% of the sample consisted of male patients. QoL was higher among patients of the group 2 in physical and environmental domains (p <0.05). The population studied presented a favorable QoL, with means above 11 in all domains. Patients aged ? 13 years old had better QoL compared to > 13 years, possibly indicating better physical functioning and less psychological conflicts.