Factors Associated with Quality of Life in Mothers of Children with Cerebral Palsy in Iran

SummaryObjective/BackgroundChildren with cerebral palsy (CP) need more attention and care, especially from their mothers. This can affect the mothers' quality of life (QOL) adversely. This study aimed to assess the QOL of Iranian mothers who have a child with CP, compared with mothers with a healthy child, focusing on some individual and social underlying factors.MethodsUsing a cluster-sampling approach, two groups of eligible mothers having children aged 4–12 years, with and without CP, from Tehran's randomly selected clinics, were chosen in a convenient way and enrolled in a cross-sectional study. A group of mothers with healthy children whose demographics closely matched with the group of mothers having children with CP were selected and recruited in the study. The group with mothers with children with CP was selected randomly from a convenience sample in 14 rehabilitation and occupational therapy clinics in Tehran, Iran. To collect data on characteristics of interest, mothers were interviewed, and the SF-36 Questionnaire was used to measure their QOL. The relationship between each characteristic and the mothers' level of QOL was assessed, and the crude odds ratios (ORs) and adjusted ORs were measured by logistic regression.ResultsSixty mothers with CP children, and 60 mothers with healthy children participated in this study. Their mean (±standard deviation) age was 33.79 (±6.02) years, and their children's mean age was 7.11 (±2.71). The two groups were significantly different in QOL mean score (57.35 ± 18.39 vs. 71.7 ± 13.58; p ≤ .001). It was shown that having a child with CP with intellectual disability is significantly related to a worse level of QOL of mothers (adjusted OR = 5.4, p ≤ .001), whereas having full-time jobs is reversely associated with it (adjusted OR = 0.2, p = .02).ConclusionTwo important factors that lead to a worse QOL of mothers with a CP child are the unemployment of mothers and having a CP child with concurrent intellectual disabilities. To diminish the adverse effects of having a CP child on QOL of mothers, unemployed women who have a CP child with concurrent intellectual disabilities need more psychological support and help

Functional brain abnormalities localized in 55 chronic tinnitus patients: fusion of SPECT coincidence imaging and MRI

Tinnitus is often defined as the perception of sounds or noise in the absence of any external auditory stimuli. The pathophysiology of subjective idiopathic tinnitus remains unclear. The aim of this study was to investigate the functional brain activities and possible involved cerebral areas in subjective idiopathic tinnitus patients by means of single photon emission computerized tomography (SPECT) coincidence imaging, which was fused with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). In this cross-sectional study, 56 patients (1 subject excluded) with subjective tinnitus and 8 healthy controls were enrolled. After intravenous injection of 5 mCi F18-FDG (fluorodeoxyglucose), all subjects underwent a brain SPECT coincidence scan, which was then superimposed on their MRIs. In the eight regions of interest (middle temporal, inferotemporal, medial temporal, lateral temporal, temporoparietal, frontal, frontoparietal, and parietal areas), the more pronounced values were represented in medial temporal, inferotemporal, and temporoparietal areas, which showed more important proportion of associative auditory cortices in functional attributions of tinnitus than primary auditory cortex. Brain coincidence SPECT scan, when fused on MRI is a valuable technique in the assessment of patients with tinnitus and could show the significant role of different regions of central nervous system in functional attributions of tinnitus