STUDY OF SOME PSYOHOLOGIOAL ASPEOTS IN ASTHMATIO OHILDREN AND THEIR PARENTS.

Abstract

Asthma is a chronic inflammatory disease of airways with multi-factorial pathogenesis. It is a diffuse obstructive lung disease with hyperactivity of the airways to a variety of stimuli and a high degree of reversibility of the obstructive process, which may occur spontaneously, or with treatment.

Prevalence of asthma in Egypt is calculated around 8.2o/o among school children.

Children with asthma are troubled by symptoms of asthma such as cough, dyspnea, and wheeze in addition to social, educational, and emotional impairments that they experience as having asthma. Conventional clinical measures usually provide valuable information about the status of the affected organ system, but they rarely capture the functional impairments (physical, emotional, and social) that are important . to children in their everyday lives. This makes many pediatricians recognize the importance of incorporating an assessment of health related quality of life (HRQL) into their clinical study.

Quality of life defined, as the functional effects of an illness and its consequent therapy upon a patient as perceived by the patient, the latter means the impairments that the patient himself consider important. Health related quality of life (HRQL) can be measured by an instrument which is Pediatric Asthma Quality of Life Questionnaire (P AQLQ) which based on asking the asthmatic children about the impact of the condition on their lives