Health-related quality of life in paediatric asthma: Children's and parents' perspectives

This study aimed to describe the quality of life of a group of Portuguese children with asthma, to explore the association between health-related quality of life (HRQL), asthma severity, child's characteristics and parental psychopathology. Additionally, the concordance between the children's HRQL self-report and the parents' HRQL proxy was assessed. Fifty children with asthma (7-13years) and their primary caregiver participated in the study by filling out the DISABKIDS-37 and other self-report questionnaires. Results for the DISABKIDS-37 supported a good internal consistency and associations between the facets and the global score, in the two versions of the questionnaire. Children and their caregivers scored the child's HRQL positively. Parents of children with an asthma diagnosis for a longer period reported better HRQL. The distribution of the HRQL scores in the child's version showed differences across categories of subjective severity rated by children and across categories of asthma control assessed by the physician. The group with uncontrolled asthma obtained lower HRQL scores than the other groups. There was a lack of convergence between self-report and parent's report of HRQL, with the exception of the physical limitation facet. Asthma severity assessed by the child and parental psychopathology explained 28% of the variance in the children's self-rated HRQL. Findings reinforce that children and caregivers' reports are complementary to each other and support the recommendation to use both information sources.