Objective: To describe the quality of life and daily functioning of Spanish children and adolescents living with Stickler syndrome (SS) and to estimate the prevalence of associated disease features in a representative sample.
Methods: A cross-sectional study of children and adolescents with SS were recruited via telephone calls through the Spanish SS Association. All participants underwent a structured clinical interview and filled in questionnaires reporting their quality of life (EuroQol-5D, TSK-11, CHAQ and PedsQoL). The prevalence of the main features associated with the syndrome and the mean scores of the questionnaires were estimated with 95% confidence intervals (95% CI).
Results: The recruited sample included 26 persons who were mainly children (mean age 10.4 ± 4.5 (SD) range: 5-14) and male (65.4%). The prevalence estimates of SS features were as follows: the presence of moderate pain (52%), hearing loss 67% (95% CI: 54.8 to 91.3) and myopia 96% (95% CI: 87.2 to 104.4). The mean scores of the QoL indices were as follows: 22.4 (95% CI: 19.2 to 25.5) (±7.5) for TSK-11; 76.2 (95% CI: 68.8 to 83.6) (±17.1) for PedsQoL, 0.8 (95% CI: 0.7 to 0.9) (±0.3) for EQ-5D and 0.61 (95% CI: 0.24 to 1.0) (±0.9) for the cHAQ functional index.
Conclusions: Our results confirmed a high variability in syndrome-related manifestations, with a large prevalence of visual and hearing deficits, pain and maxillofacial alterations. These findings may facilitate the detection of the most prevalent problems in this population, which could be a target to be addressed during the treatment of children and adolescents with SS.
Keywords: Stickler syndrome; paediatric; prevalence; psychosocial factor; quality of life.