Parental wellbeing after diagnosing a child with biliary atresia: A prospective cohort study
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Read the article on jpedsurg.org ↗Article · Jun 2021 · 1 min read
In brief
In brief
Prospective study of 52 parents reveals mothers of children with biliary atresia experience significantly elevated anxiety levels persisting up to three years post-diagnosis, though anxiety decreases over time and overall quality of life remains relatively stable. Fathers show no significant deviation from reference anxiety or stress levels.
Written by the GCMD Library team from the article.
Purpose
To determine anxiety, stress, and quality of life (QoL) in parents of children who are diagnosed with biliary atresia (BA).
Methods
Parents of BA patients (0-3 years) completed validated questionnaires at three time points: at first hospitalization (T0); 1-2 months postoperatively (T1); and 2-3 years postoperatively (T2). Results are presented in medians (min-max).
Results
We included 52 parents (age 31 [24-51 y], 31 females) of 30 BA patients. In fathers, neither anxiety nor stress levels significantly differed from reference values. Mothers reported significantly higher anxiety levels compared to reference values (T0: 48 vs 35, p=0.001; T1: 43 vs 35, p=0.03; T2: 37 vs 35, p=0.04), which significantly decreased over time (-23% between T0 and T2: p=0.04). Stress in mothers was significantly higher at T1 than at T2 (+35%, p=0.02), but was not significantly different from reference values at each time point (T0: 17 vs 14, p=0.07; T1: 18 vs 14, p=0.09; T2: 13 vs 14, p=0.52).The overall QoL in mothers and fathers was rather unaffected.
Conclusions
Particularly mothers of infants diagnosed with BA report high anxiety levels up to three years after diagnosis. The overall QoL of parents is rather unaffected after diagnosing BA in their child.