Prevalence and clinical factors that are associated with low health-related quality of life in children with vascular malformations: a cross-sectional study
Stefanos Intzes, Christos Gkogkas, Trey L. DeJong, Stavros TombrisBackground:
Patient-reported health-related quality of life (HR QoL) outcomes are important for determining the burden of disease and responses to therapy in patients with vascular malformations (VaMs).
Methods:
A cross-sectional observational study of 28 children with VaM was performed to evaluate the prevalence of and factors associated with low HR QoL by administering the disease-specific Outcome Measures for Vascular Anomalies and PROMIS measures to assess psychosocial and physical domains.
Results:
We detected impairments in various measures of HR QoL, particularly pain interference and difficulty with peer relationships, and noted that the type of VM (particularly AVM) and larger lesion size (>10 cm) were associated with worse pain, appearance, and overall general symptoms; depressive symptoms and anxiety were not prevalent in young children but were prevalent in adolescents.
Conclusions:
The small sample size affects the reliability of the subgroup analyses, but the data add to the limited pediatric literature on HR QoL in patients with VaM by emphasizing the importance of early screening for pain symptoms and the emergence of affective disorders, thereby promoting prompt interventions.