QUALITY OF LIFE OF CHILDREN WITH RICKETS IN YOUNG AGE IN ARMENIA

Quality of Life (QL) currently is one of the most important criteria for evaluating a child's function. The main characteristics of QL in pediatrics are the psychological, physical and social functioning of the body. Integral characteristics of QOL based on the subjective perception of the components of the child and his parents. As a result of the official statistics and our research it turned out that children in this age-group more often suffer from intestinal infections, anemia, hypertrophy, rickets, skin and subcutaneous fiber disease, deficiencies occurring in prenatal period. The aim of the research is to evaluate the peculiarities of QL criteria change in case of rickets. So far in Armenia there were no tools of QL assessment of children of an early age, thereby the most acceptable questionnaire of QUALIN was used to create Armenian version on its basis. We cooperated with MAPI institute and the authors of QUALIN(Qualite de vie du Nourisson) questionnaire (Manificat S., Dazord A,) and got MAPI's permission to apply the questionnaire in the Republic of Armenia. The questionnaire QUALIN was selected for studying children's QL. The results show that the QL of children with rickets is lower than the QL of the ones who are healthy. The difference is more vividly expressed in the following parameters of QL: neuropsychological development and physical health, the ability to stay alone. In this case the pediatricians have given lower mark of QL than parents. We think that one of the possible motives of such diversity is the professional approach of doctors who estimated the QL more strictly than parents did. So QUALIN international questionnaire can be applied to estimate the peculiarities of QL criteria change of children with rickets at an early age.