Quality of life and parental care burden in cochlear implanted children: A case-control study

Objectives: Cochlear implantation is a widely accepted and effective surgical method used to treat severe hearing loss. What's more, it affects the lives of both cochlear implanted children and their parents. This study aims to compare cochlear-implanted children (CIC) and their parents with healthy counterparts and their parents in terms of the quality of life (QOL) and parental care burden (CB).

Methods: This study was conducted between February and December 2018 in Turkey after receiving approval from the ethics committee. The Case Group included 34 children between 3 and 7 years of age, who received a CI due to bilateral prelingual sensorineural hearing loss and were using it for at least 1 year, and their parents. The Control Group consisted of 68 healthy children and their parents. The data were collected using disease and age-specific quality of life scales and burden interview. Normally distributed variables were analysed using parametric tests while non-normally distributed variables were analysed using nonparametric tests. The odds ratio (OR) and confidence interval (95%) were also calculated. Results were evaluated at significance level of p < 0.05.

Results: The mean age of the children and their parents in both Case and Control Groups was 63.9 months and 33.8 years, and 61.3 months and 36.6 years, respectively. There was a positive correlation between PPQ social relationship subscale and KINDL subscale scores in CIC (p < 0.05). The Case Group obtained lower mean scores from the subscales of KINDL and WHOQOL-BREF (p < 0.001, p < 0.01). The ZBI mean scores of the parents in Case and Control Groups were 43.18 and 27.54, respectively (p = 0.000).

Conclusion: It was determined that the QOL of the Case Group was lower than QOL of the Control Group, while the CB of the Case Group was higher than CB of the Control Group.