Abstract
Objective:
Quality of life has been defined as the person's mode of perceiving his own situation in terms of a system of cultures and values. The objective of this study was to evaluate quality of life in children/adolescencents with a diagnosis of type 1 Diabetes Mellitus and to compare the results with their healthy peers.
Method:
Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory (PedsQL) was applied to 65 children/adolescencents between ages 8-18 years with type 1 Diabetes Mellitus at "Diabetes Summer Camp" and 65 healthy children/adolescencents.
Results:
There was no statistically significant difference between age and gender in healthy and diabetic groups (p>0.05). Also for PedsQL scores, there was no significant difference in total scale and subscale scores between two groups (p>0.005).
Discussion:
It is known that after the diagnosis of a new disease, children and adolescence have hard times at the adaptation period but they adapt over time and their quality of life improves. Also as a result of our study, children/adolescencents with type 1 Diabetes Mellitus reported remarkably similar quality of life with the healthy population.
Keywords: Health related quality of life, type 1 diabetes mellitus, Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory
