Objectives: This study examined the quality of life (QoL) of the parents and siblings of hearing-impaired children with cochlear implants (CIs).
Design: This is a cross-sectional, questionnaire-based study. The questionnaire consists of three sub-domains - interaction, emotional well-being and support for the hearing-impaired child and the overall QoL -- and two open-ended questions for participants to provide comments and suggestions to enhance their family's QoL. A total of 63 questionnaires were e-mailed or mailed to families who met the inclusion criteria.
Setting: The study was conducted under the Center for Rehabilitation & Special Needs, Faculty of Health Sciences, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur.
Participants: A total of 79 parents and 23 siblings from 44 families of children with CI participated in this study.
Main outcome measures: The mean score for each of the sub-domain and the overall QoL for both subject groups were computed. The answers for the open-ended questions were listed and organized into themes.
Results: There were significant correlations between the overall QoL score and each of the test domains for the parents' group (p
* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.