Health related quality of life in parents of children with speech and hearing impairment.
OBJECTIVES
Hearing impairment and specific language disorder are two entities that seriously affect language acquisition in children and reduce their communication skills. These children require specific treatment and higher levels of care than healthy children. Their language abilities also strongly influence parent-child interactions. The purpose of our study was to evaluate the health-related quality of life (HRQOL) of the parents of hearing-impaired children and the parents of children with speech difficulties (specific language disorder).


METHODS
Our study subjects included 349 parents (182 mothers and 167 fathers) of preschool-aged children with receptive expressive language disorder and 131 parents (71 mothers and 60 fathers) of children with severe hearing impairment. A control group was composed of 146 parents (82 mothers and 64 fathers) of healthy children of the same age. HRQOL was assessed using the SF-36 questionnaire.


RESULTS
For all groups of parents, the mothers had poorer scores compared with the fathers, but large differences were apparent depending on the child's impairment. In the control group, the scores of the mothers were significantly lower than the fathers' scores in only two (of eight) health domains. In contrast, the scores were lower in three domains for the mothers of speech-impaired children and in six domains for the mothers of hearing-impaired children, representing the greatest difference between the parents. When compared with the control group, both the mothers and fathers of speech-impaired children scored significantly worse in five health domains. Fathers of hearing-impaired children scored significantly worse than controls in three health domains. The lowest scores, indicating the poorest HRQOL, were observed for mothers of hearing-impaired children, who obtained significantly lower scores than the control mothers in all health domains except the emotional role.


CONCLUSIONS
The parents of preschool-aged speech-and hearing-impaired children experience poorer HRQOL than parents of healthy children of the same age. Mothers of hearing-impaired children are especially affected, demonstrating a negative impact in almost all health domains.
['Aras|Ivana|I|', 'Stevanović|Ranko|R|', 'Vlahović|Sanja|S|', 'Stevanović|Siniša|S|', 'Kolarić|Branko|B|', 'Kondić|Ljiljana|L|']
D000328:Adult D002648:Child D002675:Child, Preschool D005260:Female D034381:Hearing Loss D006801:Humans D007805:Language Development Disorders D007806:Language Disorders D008297:Male D010290:Parents D011788:Quality of Life D013064:Speech Disorders D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires
Health related quality of life Parents Hearing impairment SF-36 Speech impairment