Objective: Parents of children with any chronic illness may experience increased anxiety and reduced health-related quality of life (QoL). Our objective was to evaluate the change in parental QoL before vs after tonsillectomy. Our hypothesis was that pediatric tonsil surgery with or without adenoidectomy would improve parental QoL.
Study design: A prospective cohort study.
Setting: An otolaryngology department in a tertiary academic center.
Methods: We enrolled parents of 79 children <5 years old. Adenotonsillectomy due to an obstructive airway indication was performed in 45 children. A group of 34 parents to healthy children served as a control group. Initially, we validated a modified version of the PAR-ENT-QoL questionnaire; then, we analyzed QoL parameters among parents of children with obstructive sleep-disordered breathing before and after surgical treatment.
Results: We found significant differences between the QoL score before and after surgery (P = .003). The QoL score after surgery significantly improved and was even lower than that of the control group (P < .001).
Conclusions: These results highlight the importance of timely diagnosis and treatment of children with obstructive sleep-disordered breathing, as this condition may affect not only the children themselves but also their caregivers.
Keywords: diagnosis; obstructive sleep-disordered breathing; pediatric; prospective control trial; quality of life; sleep questionnaire.