Quality of life of adolescents born with extremely low birth weight.

AIM: To explore extremely low birth weight [ELBW] adolescents' self-reported quality of life [QoL] and compare it with control group of same age full-term peers.

METHODS

This project is nested within a national follow-up study on the long-term outcome of ELBW infants born in Iceland in 1991-1995. Twenty-nine ELBW adolescents and 30 controls evaluated their QoL using KIDSCREEN-52. To evaluate group differences, Chi-square tests and Mann-Whitney U-tests were conducted. Multivariate logistic regression was used to determine the influence of birth weight on QoL in ten dimensions.

RESULTS

No differences were observed between the groups on six of ten KIDSCREEN dimensions. ELBW adolescents reported significantly lower QoL on four dimensions: Physical well-being (OR 3.41; CI, 1.14-10.25), Psychological well-being (OR 7.65; CI, 2.04-28.78), Moods and emotion (OR 5.20; CI, 1.53-17.82), and Self-perception (OR 3.20; CI, 1.05-9.74).

CONCLUSION

ELBW adolescents report similar social well-being and participation compared with same age full-term peers. Conversely, they report lower physical and emotional quality of life.