The Impact of Children’s Illness Perceptions on Paediatric Cancer Patients’ Quality of Life

Purpose
The study of children’s illness perceptions has been widely developed over de last decade (Chateaux, 2005). More recently research has focussed on the impact of illness perceptions on Quality of Life (QoL). The present communication aims to analyse the impact of illness perceptions of children with cancer on Generic and Modular QoL. Authors put forward the hypothesis that the several dimensions of children’s illness perceptions may influence QoL in different ways.

Methods
The Brief Illness Perception Questionnaire (Broadbent et al.,2006) and the Quality of Life Systemic Inventory for Children - Module for Cancer (Missotten et al., 2008) were administered to 40 children with cancer, aged from 8 to 12 years, at a paediatric hospital. Specifically developed for children from these ages, the QoL measure is a self-assessment questionnaire that provides a general and a modular score (general domains of QoL and domains of QoL related with cancer).

Results
Multiple regressions highlighted that five dimensions of children’s cancer perceptions are significant predictors of QoL, namely illness “consequences”, “identity”, “concerns”, “coherence” and “timeline”. The most predictable dimension of both general and modular QoL is “cancer consequences”: it explains 36% (Beta=.51; p=.01) of the general and 47% (Beta=.70; p=.01) of the modular QoL variance. Children reporting a less threatening view about the consequences of cancer in their lives reveal a better QoL.

Conclusions
The framework of the present study has its fundamentals on recent literature developments by presenting a modular approach to QoL assessment. Results revealed that illness perceptions of children with cancer play an important role both on general QoL and QoL more directly related with cancer and treatments. Through the analysis of the influence of cancer perceptions on QoL, findings provide information to design intervention to promote QoL among paediatric cancer patients.