Supplementary Material - Quality of life in children with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia (ALL)

Project Title: Q Aim: To compare quality of life (as measured by the PedsQL survey) in ALL patients receiving treatment, to those who have recently completed treatment. Other hypotheses include the relationship between quality of life and demographic variables such as age and gender. Outcome Variables: PedsQL scores (Psychological Health Summary, Physical Health Summary and Total Score) as assessed by a) a parent (n = 49); and b) the child (n = 36). Patients younger than 5 years of age did not fill out a child survey. Exclusion Criteria: Individuals who had relapsed (n = 4) and who were not primarily treated in Queensland (n = 3) were excluded from the analysis. The first survey only was used for patients who filled out the survey multiple times (n = 2). Methods: Initial analyses were performed using the Total Parent and Total Child PedsQL scores as outcome variables. A paired t-test was used to test for difference between the parent and child scores (Table 1). A series of univariate ANOVAs were then used to assess the relationship between quality of life and eleven demographic variables: whether a patient was on or off treatment; age group; gender; time since diagnosis; use of standard risk or high risk treatment; area of residence; use of alternative therapy; use of alternative product; mothers level of education; fathers level of education; and presence of comorbidity. These variables were categorised as shown in Table 2. Results: Table 1 shows that there is no significant difference in overall quality of life between the parent’s survey (Total Parent PedsQL) and the child’s survey (Total Child PedsQL). Table 2 shows that for both the Total Parent and Total Child PedsQL score there is no significant association with any of the eleven demographic analysed (p >> 0.05 in most cases). There are however, two results that are equal to 0.05 (time since diagnosis, parents survey p = 0.05; and gender, childs survey p = 0.047). Given the number of multiple significance test performed, and the error rate assumed (5%) it is likely that these marginally significant results are due to random variation. Conclusion: Overall quality of life in paediatric patients, as assessed by either the parent or the child, is not associated with a patient being on or off treatment, age group, gender, time since diagnosis, use of standard risk or high risk treatment, area of residence, use of alternative therapy, use of alternative product, mothers level of education, fathers level of education, or presence of comorbidity. Had any of these variables been significantly associated with the overall measure of quality of life used (‘Total’ PedsQL scores) it would have been useful to assess the detailed role of the physical health and psychological health scores in this effect. However, there is no significant main effect of the demographic variables of interest in this dataset.