Health-related quality of life in children who use cochlear implants or hearing aids

Olga María Alegre-de la Rosa; Luis Miguel Villar-Angulo

doi:10.1016/j.heliyon.2019.e03114

Health-related quality of life in children who use cochlear implants or hearing aids

Heliyon. 2020 Jan 9;6(1):e03114. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2019.e03114. eCollection 2020 Jan.

Authors

Olga María Alegre-de la Rosa¹, Luis Miguel Villar-Angulo²

Affiliations

¹ Departamento de Didáctica e Investigación Educativa, Facultad de Educación, Universidad de La Laguna, España, Spain.
² Departamento de Didáctica y Organización Escolar, Facultad de Ciencias de la Educación, Universidad de Sevilla, España, Spain.

Abstract

Objectives: First, this study aimed at evaluating the health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and socio-demographic characteristics of children with cochlear implants (CIs) and hearing aids (HAs) from the 2 provinces of the Canary Islands (Spain) on the Kid-KINDL^R_children_7-13. The second goal was to analyze parental background factors and the perspectives of their children with CIs and HAs on Kid_Kiddo-KINDL^R_Parents_ 7-17. Finally, the third objective was to explore agreement between children's self-reports and their parents' reports concerning HRQoL.

Design: The data consisted of 89 children with CIs and 63 children with HAs and their 89 parents, respectively. The socio-demographic characteristics of children and parental background factors included demographic and audiological variables. Student's t-test, one-way ANOVA, post hoc analysis and 4 concordance correlation coefficients (CCC) were used to address the 3 aims.

Results: Children with CIs exhibited a perception of better HRQoL in comparison with children with HAs. Among other differences, children with CIs and HAs and their parents were significantly distinct in Setting (i.e., provinces of Tenerife and Gran Canaria) (t = 2.921, p < 0.010). Moreover, parents were significantly different in some background factors (i.e., age, socioeconomic status, and learning). While Cohen's Kappa values for most dimensions were too small, the ICC and Student's t-test expressed only concordance in the overall HRQoL and Physical well-being.

Conclusions: Children with CIs and their parents demostrated a perception of better HRQoL than children with HAs and their parents. Overall, children's self-ratings of HRQoL differed from their parents' reports.

Keywords: Children; Cochlear implants; Health-related quality of life (HRQoL); Hearing aids; Medicine; Parents; Pediatrics.