Avaliação da qualidade de vida em crianças e adolescentes com câncer

Abstract

This is a study on assessing the quality of life of children and adolescents with cancer who aimed to produce two proposed article. The first article proposal aimed at knowing the mean overall scores or dimensions found in studies which used the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory 3.0 Cancer Module. Applied the strategy for searching databases Scopus, Web of Science, BIREME, PsycoInfo and EBSCO host. Met 210 titles and abstracts, 189 were excluded for duplication and for not meeting the inclusion criteria. Analyzed and 21 elected to compose the study. All articles published in English, mostly in America (47.6%) and in the period 2011-2013 (61.9%), we used the questionnaire to collect data for both children and adolescents and for their parents in most articles (61.9%). The range of scores for overall dimensions and probably was related to the selection of comparison groups because one can see the diversity of the inclusion criteria and variables for analysis in each study. It was concluded that the mean scores for dimensions and overall did not reach values below 30 and the highest scores for dimensions are above 80. It is suggested that the dimension anxiety during treatment, on account of children, may have achieved the greatest scores within each study. The second article proposal aimed at evaluating the quality of life of children and adolescents with cancer treatment or follow-up and investigate associations with socioeconomic and clinical variables. We conducted a cross-sectional study with 98 children and adolescents diagnosed with cancer a reference unit in pediatric oncology in the state of Espirito Santo - Brazil. Applied the PedsQLTM questionnaire and collected the sociodemographic and clinical information. The sample was characterized predominantly male, age range 08-12 years, from economy class C and diagnosed with leukemia. Was no association between the age of 5 in mean scores of the eight dimensions of quality of life assessment. There were no statistically significant differences in any of the dimensions or total score of quality of life with the sex of the child and adolescent, tumor type, economic class and maternal education. It was concluded that age, the status of treatment and attending school are factors that modify the quality of life assessment in children and adolescents reporting, increasing or decreasing the difficulties to the treatment and the disease.