ABSTRACT
Introduction:Despite the fact that infantile haemangioma is one of the most common benign tumour of the child, the impact of this pathology on the quality of life of patients and their families has not aroused much interest in health services research. Several tools have been proposed to date to assess this, but there is no Romanian standardised instrument yet. Taking as a model the questionnaire developed and validated in English by Chamlin et al (2015), we translated, culturally adapted and piloted this instrument into Romanian. The questionnaire was administered during two years, between August 2019 and August 2021, to the parents of children with a diagnosis of infantile hemangioma who attended "M. S. Curie" Children's Emergency Hospital, Bucharest, Romania. Inclusion criteria were the diagnosis of infantile hemangioma and children under the age of 24 months. Other comorbidities which may have caused other health impairments were considered as exclusion criteria. Response rate was 100% for all items in the questionnaire. A total of 112 family respondents were included for analysis. Classic psychometric tests were used. Results:Based on the 29 standardized original items, the four scales have Cronbach-alpha values ranging from 0.489 (CSI), 0.609 (PSF), 0.689 (PEF) to 0.719 (CPS). The proposed final Romanian version includes 26 standardised items. The Cronbach-alpha values improve marginally: 0.63 (PSF), 0.67 (CSI), 0.72 (PEF) and 0.733 (0.78) (CPS). Conclusion:We propose the 21-item scale of the IH-QOL-RO as the Romanian version of the IH-QOL®. The instrument has been culturally adapted and is ready to use in paediatric clinics. We recommend the use of IH-QOL-RO in a longitudinal study design as a measure of health-related quality of life and to complete the classical set of psychometric tests with the 48-hour test-retest reliability.
