Assessing Quality of Life in Children and Adolescents Diagnosed with Pulmonary Tuberculosis

Abstract

Work is devoted to studying the quality of life parameters of children and adolescents with different forms of tuberculosis. Laboratory and instrumental methods of examination of patients do not cover all aspects of tuberculous infection and do not allow valuing the condition of children and adolescents with pulmonary tuberculosis. During the analysis of quality of life parameters, there is a possibility to define the influence of the disease on physical, psychological, and social aspects of the organism’s functioning. The analysis of quantitative indexes children and adolescents quality of life was conducted depending on gender sign, area of resi- dence, and form of tuberculosis. For research of quality of life in pediatric practice, the questionnaire of Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory—PedsQL—is used. The questionnaire of PedsQL 4.0. includes 23 questions, incorporated in 4 scales. Every question has 5 variants of answers: “no,” “hardly ever,” “sometimes,” “often,” and “almost always,” from which one has to be chosen, most going near a situation.