Qualidade de vida das mães de crianças com paralisia cerebral em reabilitação / Quality of life of mothers of children with cerebral palsy rehabilitation

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2009

RESUMO

This thesis follows the scientific article model. The first article, Quality of life of primary caregivers of children with Cerebral Palsy: integrative review of the literature was submitted to the Revista Eletrônica de Enfermagem. In this article, which used the descriptors Quality of Life, Mothers, Parents, Caregivers and Cerebral Palsy, a integrative review of the literature was undertaken which included scientific articles published between 1997 and 2008. Of the 28 articles found, 5 formed part of this sample, which despite their considerable methodological limitations, made it clear that certain aspects of the quality of life of caregivers of children with Cerebral Palsy are lower than those of caregivers of healthy children. In some of these studies, the possibility of a correlation between the level of the childrens motor disability and the quality of life of the caregivers was investigated. However, the authors did not agree on this correlation, which showed the need for further investigation. So to answer this need, a second article, entitled The quality of life of mothers of children with Cerebral Palsy: the impact of motor disability, was forwarded to the periodical Disability &Rehabilitation. This was a crosssectional study, which set out to correlate the quality of life of 146 mothers of children with Cerebral Palsy with that of 30 mothers of children with normal development, all evaluated by the Medical Outcome Study 36-item Short-Form Health Survey (SF-36). In addition, the Gross Motor Function Classification System (GMFCS) was used to characterize the motor disability of the children with Cerebral Palsy. This study proved that the quality of life of mothers of children with Cerebral Palsy is lower than that of mothers with children with normal development in terms of Functioning Capacity and Vitality domains, but the childrens motor disability did not influence it. A third article, entitled Relationship between the quality of life of mothers of children with Cerebral Palsy and the childrens motor functioning, after ten months of rehabilitation was submitted to the periodical Revista Latino-Americana de Enfermagem. In this article, 100 mothers of children with Cerebral Palsy were studied, in an effort to assess the quality of life of these mothers after their childrens rehabilitation, over a period of ten months. The abovementioned tools were also used and the Gross Motor Function Measure (GMFM). However, this was a longitudinal study which sought to correlate the quality of life of the mothers with the development of their childrens gross motor function. The results show that after ten months of rehabilitation, the gross motor function of the children with Cerebral Palsy had improved significantly, while the mothers of these children showed an improvement in life quality in the pain domain; in addition, the improvement in the childrens motor function did not influence the changes which occurred in the mothers quality of life, including the pain domain. On considering the complexity of quality of life and the clinical condition which Cerebral Palsy represents, one is led to believe that other factors could have a greater influence than motor functioning disability, since this factor alone does not interfere with the quality of life of the mothers.

ASSUNTO(S)

ciencias da saude qualidade de vida, mães, pais, família, cuidadores, paralisia cerebral, reabilitação quality of life, mothers, parents, family, caregivers, cerebral palsy, rehabilitation.

ACESSO AO ARTIGO

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