BACKGROUND AND AIMS Health-related quality of life (HRQOL) has garnered increasing interest especially for health care providers and researchers. The study aims to evaluate the HRQOL in parents of congenital heart disease (CHD) children, and to clarify the effect of the disease severity on the outcome of the HRQOL perception. Also, to analyze the internal consistency of the Arabic version of the World Health Organization (WHO) QOL-BREEF tool in order to determine whether the tool had good validity for the target population. METHODS A cross-sectional study. The HRQOL perception was evaluated using WHOQOL-BREF questionnaire, and the internal consistency of the tool was tested using Cronbach's alpha (α-C), RESULTS: The study sample consisted of 200 individuals, 120 parents of CHD children, compared to 80 parents of children with minor illnesses (mean age of participating parents = 35.1 ± 9.8 years). While evaluating the HRQOL, the group of parents of children with minor illnesses had higher scores than the total group of parents of CHD children in all domains, indicating a better HRQOL. Class-IV subgroup of parents of CHD children showed the most significant lower total score of domains between all classes (44.47 ± 12, p < 0.001). With respect to the internal consistency of the WHOQOL-BREF, estimation of α-C values were 0.84 points for the group of parents of CHD children, and 0.87 for the group of parents of children with minor illnesses. CONCLUSIONS This short-term study emphasized that, HRQOL scores among parents of CHD children are compromised, and the severity of their children illness significantly affect the total score of domains in their HRQOL perception. Furthermore, the tool showed to be practical and efficient to evaluate the QOL of parents of CHD children in our population in future researches.

中文翻译：

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使用WHOQOL-BREF评估先天性心脏病患儿父母的生活质量：一项来自西北沙特阿拉伯的横断面研究。

背景和目的健康相关的生活质量（HRQOL）引起了越来越多的关注，尤其是对于医疗保健提供者和研究人员。该研究旨在评估先天性心脏病（CHD）儿童父母的HRQOL，并阐明疾病严重程度对HRQOL感知结果的影响。此外，分析世界卫生组织（WHO）的QOL-BREEF工具的阿拉伯文版本的内部一致性，以确定该工具对于目标人群是否具有良好的有效性。方法横断面研究。使用WHOQOL-BREF问卷对HRQOL感知进行评估，并使用Cronbach's alpha（α-C）测试该工具的内部一致性。结果：该研究样本包括200名个体，120名冠心病儿童的父母，相比之下，患有轻度疾病的儿童的80名父母（参与父母的平均年龄= 35.1±9.8岁）。在评估HRQOL时，在所有领域中，轻度疾病儿童的父母组的得分均高于冠心病儿童父母的总组，这表明HRQOL更好。冠心病儿童父母的IV级亚组显示所有类别之间域的总得分最低（44.47±12，p <0.001）。关于WHOQOL-BREF的内部一致性，CHD儿童父母组的α-C值估计为0.84分，轻度疾病儿童父母组的α-C值估计为0.87。结论这项短期研究强调，冠心病患儿父母的HRQOL分数受到损害，儿童疾病的严重程度会严重影响其HRQOL感知领域的总分。此外，该工具在未来的研究中显示出实用和有效的方法来评估我们人口中冠心病儿童父母的生活质量。