الفهرس 
QUALITY OF LIFEOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
 |  | from | 50 |  |  |
| | | from | 50 | | |
Abstract
Background: Atopic dermatitis (AD) is a chronic inflammatory dermatosis of multifactorial etiology, characterized by moderate to intense purities .In the past three decades, the number of patients with AD has doubled - or even tripled - in most parts of the world, constituting a major public health problem, especially in industrialized countries .Some children have difficulties in their social or family life that are directly associated with the treatment, as well as experiencing compromised learning and academic achievement, and difficulties finding employment and life insurance .Quality of life is a multidimensional measure; it is not restricted to either physical or psychological effects of treatment, quality of life reflects the child’s or family’s view about the impact of treatment; it is not directly related to disease state or traditional clinical measures of severity.
Objectives: This work aimed at measuring, through validated questionnaires, the impact of AD on the quality of life of children and their parents and/or caregivers.
Patients and Methods: This analytical cross sectional study was conducted on 85 children with physician diagnosed AD following up at the Pediatric Allergy and Immunology Clinic, Children’s Hospital and Ain Shams University during the period from May 2018 to December 2019. The study gained approval from the local ethics’ committee of the Department of Pediatrics, Ain Shams University. Informed consent was obtained from the parents or caregivers before enrollment.QOL for children was assessed using The Children’s Dermatology Life Quality Index (CDLQI) and QOL for the parents/caregivers was assessed using The Family Dermatology Life Quality Index (FDLQI)
Results: analysing the CDLQI revealed that more than half of studied children have an extremely affected QOL (55.4%), and that most of the studied children are affected in each domain but by variable ranges . the most negative effect on QOL is related to itching, pain discomfort. Our study also revealed that there was statistically significant effect of face affection on QOL of children .we also found that more than half of parents /caregivers had for QOL a very large to extremely affected QOL score (65.9%) and that the first two frequently reported problems in our study were emotional distress (83.5%) and treatment burden (82.4),there was statistically significant effect of presence of other sib affection, presence of other allergies in the affected child and complication from treatment in cases with very large to extreme severity than those with no effect or less to moderate effect and that poor HRQOL of children may also impair their caregivers’ mental and physical .
Conclusion: Atopic dermatitis affects the quality of life of both children and their guardians, and indicates the importance of including the study of quality of life as a complement to clinical evaluation.