Quality of life in children with chronic kidney disease

Abstract

Background: Progressive chronic kidney disease (CKD), irrespective of the underlying etiology, affects the quality of life (QoL) of children due to the need for regular follow-up visits, a strict medication program and diet intake.

Methods: The Greek version of the KIDSCREEN-52 multidimensional questionnaire was used in children with CKD, renal transplantation (RT) and in a control group (CG) of healthy children.

Results: Fifty-five patients between 8 and 18 years, with CKD (n = 25), RT (n = 16) and with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) on peritoneal dialysis (PD) (n = 14) were included. Each group of studied children was compared with the CG (n = 55), the validation sample (VS) (n = 1200) and the parent proxy scores. Physical well-being of all studied children was significantly lower compared to CG (p = 0.004). In contrast, all studied children between 8 and 11 years showed better social acceptance compared to VS (p = 0.0001). When QoL of children with CKD was compared with parent proxy QoL, conflicting opinions were observed in several dimensions, such as self-perception (p = 0.023), autonomy (p = 0.012), school environment (p = 0.012) and financial resources (p = 0.03).

Conclusions: QoL and mainly the dimension of physical well-being, may be affected dramatically in children with CKD unrelated to disease stage. In early school years children with CKD seem to feel higher social acceptance than the healthy controls, exhibiting better score in this dimension. Optimal care requires attention not only to medical management, but also to an assessment of QoL factors, that may help promote pediatric patient's health.

Keywords: Chronic kidney disease; Quality of life; Questionnaire; Renal transplantation.