Quality of Life of Caregivers of Very Low–Birthweight Infants

Abstract

Although very low-birthweight infants had poorer health and required significantly more health care resources than full-term infants, caregivers' quality of life did not differ between the two groups. Caregivers of both groups of infants reported substantial mental and physical health problems but perceived good quality of life. These data will aid parents, physicians, and policy makers as they struggle to make decisions concerning care of high-risk, costly, very low-birthweight infants.

Quality of life among parents of preterm infants: a scoping review

“…Six studies were cross-sectional, two were case-control and four were longitudinal studies. Eight of the studies had at least one comparison group, such as caregivers and mothers of full-term infants [25][26][27], women with other pregnancy complication than a preterm delivery [28], mothers of nearterm (34-37 weeks of gestation) infants [27], parents of very low birth weight (VLBW) infants not participating in a Clinical Randomized Intervention Trial [30], mothers of preterm infants who did not require and previously received home oxygen therapy [31], mothers of infants who did not receive any intensive care or who received special care only for up to a maximum of 3 days [29] and families of neurologically normal infants [23]. The remaining four studies [32][33][34][35] assessed the QoL of mothers of preterm infants.…”

“…In the total of the 12 papers, samples were composed mostly of mothers (n = 9), followed by samples of parents (n = 1), families (n = 1) and primary caregivers (n = 1). In the latter, 97.6% were mothers [25]. The gender of the participants is not specified in the study analysing families [23].…”

“…The gender of the participants is not specified in the study analysing families [23]. Samples varied from 20 first-time mothers [32] to 223 mothers of late preterm infants [29], and there were 167 caregivers [25], 37 families [23] and 62 parents of VLBW infants [30].…”

“…Half of the studies used the WHOQOL-BREF Questionnaire [26,28,35] or the 36-item Medical Outcomes Short Form-36 version 2 [32][33][34]. The remaining quantitative studies assessed parental QoL through the following instruments: The 36-item Medical Outcomes Short Form (SF36) [31]; Quality of Life Inventory [25]; The PedsQL Family Impact Module [29]; Maternal Postpartum Quality of Life Instrument (MAPP-QOL) [27] and Quality of Life Scale-Norwegian version (QoLS-N) [30]. Five instruments assessed the global/overall QoL [25][26][27][28][29][30]35], and three studies measured the domains physical health and emotional health using the same instrument [32][33][34].…”

Health-related quality of life of mothers of very low birth weight children at the age of five: results from the newborn lung project statewide cohort study

“…Eiser et al found that mothers of preterm infants at 2 years reported worse HRQoL than mothers of full-term infants [6], while another study found that HRQoL did not differ between caregivers of VLBW 1-year old infants and their counterparts. [7] These studies may be limited by the (1) focus on short-term HRQoL outcomes in parents; (2) use of convenience samples; and (3) lack of emphasis on a life-course perspective, thereby not controlling for important confounders. In addition, it has not been investigated what role stress may play in HRQoL of mothers of VLBW children.…”