Association of Family Management Styles with Health-Related Quality of Life among Children with Thalassemia
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Objective: To examine the association between family management and HRQoL among children with thalassemia and to identify sociodemographic and clinical factors associated with both outcomes.
Methods and Materials: A descriptive correlational study was conducted at the Hereditary Blood Diseases Center in Babylon Governorate, Iraq. A purposive sample of 205 families of children aged 6-18 years completed an Arabic version of the Family Management Measure and the PedsQL 4.0 Parent Proxy-Report. Descriptive statistics, bivariate tests, Spearman correlation, and multiple linear regression were performed in SPSS 27.
Findings: Most families had a moderate family-management level (94.1%; mean total score = 158.03, SD = 17.94), whereas 56.1% of children were classified in the low HRQoL category (mean raw score = 28.61/92, SD = 12.06). Overall family management was positively associated with HRQoL (rho = .489, p < .001). In adjusted analysis, family management remained the strongest correlate of HRQoL (beta = .443, p < .001); maternal education and family type were positively associated with HRQoL, whereas illness duration was negatively associated.
Conclusion: More effective family management was associated with better parent-reported HRQoL among children with thalassemia. Family-centered nursing support, caregiver education, and attention to long-term disease burden may be important components of comprehensive thalassemia care, while the cross-sectional design precludes causal inference.
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