Quality of life of children and adolescents with diabetes of Northern Greek origin.

ABSTRACT

AIM: To culturally adapt the diabetes- specific quality of life (QOL) instrument PedsQL 3.0 Diabetes Module (DM) and the generic QOL instrument PedsQL 4.0 Generic Core Scales (GCS) to the population of Greek diabetic children. Also, to evaluate QOL in youths with type 1 diabetes, compare it with that of healthy youths, and identify relationships between QOL and metabolic control and intensity of treatment. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Eighty nine (89) children and adolescents with type I diabetes and 89 without diabetes, all with their parents (2-18 years of age, diabetes duration>6 months) completed the Greek GCS. Those with diabetes also completed the Greek DM. RESULTS: Cronbach alpha coefficient of child and parent report of both instruments, in general approached 0.70, indicating their internal consistency reliability. Both instruments demonstrated positive intercorrelations with their total scores and subscales of DM demonstrated positive intercorrelations with total score of the generic instrument, supporting the validity of both instruments for the evaluation of QOL of Greek diabetic children. No statistically important differences were found among patient and parent report of diabetes and control group in both instruments. Exception was "Social functioning" in which children with diabetes reported better QOL. Growing age, female gender, large BMI, poor metabolic control and intensity of treatment did not influence QOL of children with diabetes. CONCLUSIONS: Greek PedsQL GCS and DM have sufficient acceptability, reliability and validity so as to be used for the purposes of a comparative study. Youth with diabetes reported similar QOL with non-diabetic youth of the same age and socioeconomic status.