Health-related quality of life at age 10 years in very low-birth-weight children with and without threshold retinopathy of prematurity.
OBJECTIVE
To describe parental perspectives on health status and health-related quality of life (HRQL) at age 10 years in children with birth weights less than 1251 g who participated in the multicenter Cryotherapy for Retinopathy of Prematurity (CRYO-ROP) study.


METHODS
In 244 participants in the randomized CRYO-ROP trial and 102 CRYO-ROP participants who did not develop ROP, the Health Utilities Index (HUI) system was used to characterize health status for the following 8 attributes: vision, hearing, speech, ambulation, dexterity, emotion, cognition, and pain. Using a utility formula, HRQL was determined for each child on a scale from 0.0 (dead) to 1.00 (perfect health).


RESULTS
The proportion of the ROP-randomized group with limitations in 4 attributes or more was 20.6% compared with 2.0% for the no-ROP group. Within the ROP-randomized group, the proportion of "sighted" children with limitations in 4 attributes or more was 6.4% vs 46.5% in the "blind/low vision" group. The median HRQL score for the ROP-randomized children was lower than for the no-ROP children (0.72 vs 0.97, P<.001); the median HRQL score for the sighted-randomized children was 0.87 vs 0.27 for the blind/low vision children (P<.001).


CONCLUSIONS
Threshold ROP was associated with functional limitations in health attributes and reduction in HRQL scores at age 10 years. Furthermore, among children who developed threshold ROP, a greater reduction in HRQL scores was found among children with a poor visual outcome compared with those with better sight.
Quinn
Graham E
GE
Division of Pediatric Ophthalmology, The Children's Hopsital of Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA. quinn@email.chop.edu
Dobson
Velma
V
Saigal
Saroj
S
Phelps
Dale L
DL
Hardy
Robert J
RJ
Tung
Betty
B
Summers
C Gail
CG
Palmer
Earl A
EA
D000203:Activities of Daily Living; D001294:Attitude to Health; D002648:Child; D017679:Cryotherapy; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D005865:Gestational Age; D006304:Health Status; D006305:Health Status Indicators; D006801:Humans; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D019102:Infant, Very Low Birth Weight / Q000523:psychology*; D008297:Male; D015337:Multicenter Studies as Topic; D010290:Parents / Q000523:psychology*; D011788:Quality of Life; D016032:Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic; D012178:Retinopathy of Prematurity / Q000523:psychology* / Q000601:surgery; D014786:Vision Disorders / Q000523:psychology*