Health related quality of life among preterm children: a latent profile analysis

Abstract

Very preterm (VPT) children, in comparison to full-term children, are in greater risk of developing adverse cognitive, social or psychiatric outcomes, and their parents often report a lower health related quality of life (HRQoL) relative to their peers. Adverse outcome is frequently linked to their perinatal complications or socioeconomic (SE) status. The current study aims to find subgroups of preterm HRQoL using latent profile analysis (LPA) and regression analysis, to identify possible predictors among perinatal, SE factors and current problems. VPT children from two national birth cohorts: 2002/03, aged 15-17 (n = 70, M = 16.06) and 2007/08 10-12 (n = 113, M = 11.31) were included in the study. Parents answered questions about child’s health and behavioural/emotional problems, study curriculum, and their own education; both the parent and the child filled a HRQoL questionnaire, Kidscreen-52. Four profiles were identified with LPA: “High HRQoL” (n = 22); “Optimal HRQoL” (n = 80); “Suboptimal HRQoL, low Autonomy” (n = 49) and “Low HRQoL, optimal Autonomy” (n = 32). Gestational age, school curriculum, gender, cohort, parent education and several somatic, emotional and behavioural problems were all found to be important predictors of belonging to a specific profile while the number of perinatal complications was not. With this study we explored the internal differences of HRQoL among preterm children in order to understand the trajectories leading to different outcomes.