Impact of children's respiratory allergies on caregivers

BACKGROUND: Despite the great attention that has been paid to HRQoL in children with respiratory allergy, few studies have addressed this aspect in relation to caregivers. The aim of our study was to evaluate the impact of childhood respiratory allergies on caregivers by means of a new method. METHODS: 119 parents of children suffering from allergies (75 suffering from asthma and 44 suffering from rhinitis) were recruited from three Italian Allergy Units. Parents were asked to complete the Disease Impact On Caregiver (DIOC), a new non disease specific questionnaire, validated on the Italian population. The questionnaire consists of 31 items grouped in four factors (Performance, Personal gratification, Psychophysical endurance, Socio-emotional domain) and covers the life aspects that could be affected by the assistance duties towards an ill family member. RESULTS: Child's asthma resulted to have a worse impact on many aspects of a parents' life than rhinitis. Differences resulted to be statistically significant in 19 aspects out of the 31 assessed. The worse impact of asthma versus rhinitis was confirmed in the following domains: Performance (24.0 +/- 18.2 vs 11.5 +/- 17.8), Personal gratification (26.3 +/- 20.5 vs 12.1 +/- 16.5) and Psychophysical endurance (35.0 +/- 24.8 vs 18.8 +/- 21.7). In the Socio-emotional domain no difference emerged. CONCLUSIONS: Compared to parents of rhinitics, parents of asthmatic children appear to be more compromised in their resistance to stress, mood, emotional stability, amount of spare time and leisure activities. Our results suggest the need of giving the due attention to these problems both in clinical practice and in research, in order to avoid possible interferences of the caregiver's distress in the optimization of treatment outcome.