Factors Related to Quality of Life Among Children With Thalassemia Major: A Literature Review

Abstract

Background: Thalassemia major is a chronic disease in children that harms children quality of life by interrupting physical function, emotional function, social function, and school function.
 Objectives: This study aims to identify factors contributed to quality of life among children with thalassemia major.
 Design: The research design used systematic review based on the PRISMA guideline.
 Data Sources: The source of the articles used three databases including Pubmed, Science Direct, and NCBI with keywords: “quality of life” AND “children” AND “thalassemia major”. The articles were searched from July to September 2021.
 Review Methods: The data in this study were obtained by reviewing articles from previous studies using PRISMA checklist and PICOS. To assess the quality of article, JBI Critical Appraisal Tools was also used as a guideline.
 Results: There were 6 articles reviewed according to the inclusion criteria. All the studies showed that the score of quality of life among children with thalassemia major was lower than that of healthy children. The school function among children with thalassemia major was known to have the lowest score from this review. Factors contributed to quality of life among children with thalassemia major according to this review were chelation therapy, pretransfusion hemoglobin, age during the first transfusion, frequency of transfusion, child’s age, family income, parents’ education, hepatomegaly, body mass index, and serum ferritin levels.
 Conclusion: This review notifies the necessity of developing strategies in improving the quality of life of children with thalassemia major that involves parents, health services, schools, and the government.

COVID-19 Lockdown aggravated the Health-Related Quality of Life in Children with Transfusion-Dependent-Thalassemia

“…It is noteworthy that the age of diagnosis was an influential factor in HRQoL in our study. The enrolled patients who were diagnosed older than 2 years had significantly higher total HRQoL scores than those who were diagnosed younger, which is congruent with previous studies (19,(28)(29)(30)(31). It might be attributed to lesser duration of suffering.…”

“…Several studies attributed the higher scores at younger ages to the recent onset of the disease, which led to less iron overload and thus fewer consequences (21,26). Additionally, as the patient matures, he becomes aware of the nature of his disease, undergoes more repeated blood transfusion visits, school absence, bullying at school, and obvious morphological changes result in poor self-esteem, expression of negative thoughts toward their chronic illness, leading to social withdrawal, and low social performance (27,28). Nevertheless, other studies contradicted our results and reported that age was not an effective factor in poor scoring in HRQol.…”