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Temperament, personality affect quality of life in children with pediatric cancer
Patients with pediatric cancer at risk for poor quality of life during and after treatment can be identified by evaluating dispositional attributes, according to recent study findings published in the Journal of Pediatric Psychology.
Felicity W. K. Harper, PhD, of the Karmanos Cancer Institute in Detroit, and colleagues evaluated 103 patients with pediatric cancer aged 3 to 12 years and their parents to determine whether children with higher effortful control and ego-resilience contribute to positive quality of life.
Eighty-one percent of the children had acute lymphoblastic leukemia, followed by Wilms’ tumors (4%), non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (4%), lymphoma (2%), astrocytoma (2%), rhabdomyosarcoma (2%) and other (5%).
Participants’ quality of life was positively associated with ego-resilience. There was a positive indirect effect on quality of life through ego-resilience by effortful control. Communication (P<.01), cognitive problems (P<.01), nausea (P<.05), perceived physical appearance (P<.05) and treatment anxiety (P<.01) were all significantly indirectly associated with effortful control.
“Our findings clearly demonstrate that pediatric cancer patients’ temperament and personality play significant roles in individual differences in [quality of life],” the researchers wrote. “Early assessment of child [effortful control] and [ego-resilience] can provide the basis for intervention designed to increase adaptive responses to treatment, and therefore, positively affect long-term psychosocial outcomes. Understanding the contribution of children’s dispositional attributes to individual differences in [quality of life] can provide professionals who work with pediatric cancer patients another avenue for anticipating, and intervening with, children who are at-risk for poor [quality of life] outcomes.”
Disclosure: The study was funded in part by the Herrick Foundation and the National Cancer Institute. The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.
