Effectiveness of Multimodal Intervention Package to Assess the Nutritional Status & Psycho-Social Wellbeing among Children with Thalassemia Attending Thalassemia Unit of HSK Hospital & Research Center Bagalkot, Karnataka

Abstract

Background of the study: Every year approximately 100,000 children with Thalassemia Major are born

world over, of which 10,000 are born in India. It is estimated that there are about 65,000-67,000 ?-thalassemia

patients in our country with around 9,000-10,000 cases being added every year

Once a child is diagnosed to have thalassemia homozygous disorders, he/she has to take lifelong treatment.

Management includes regular 3 weekly filtered packed red cell transfusions, chelation therapy for iron

overload.

Objectives of the study: • To find out the effectiveness of multi-model interventional package on

nutritional status & psycho-social well being of children

• To find out the association between nutritional status & psycho-social well being with selected socio

demographic variables

• To identify the correlation between nutritional status & psycho-social well being of children

Materials & Methods: An experimental research approach was used for the study with pre experimental

one group pre test -post test without control group design. Study was conducted at thalassemia unit of

Hanagal Shri Kumareshwar Hospital and research center Bagalkot, Karnataka. Using digital weighing

machine weight of children has been collected followed by this Likert;s scale is used to assess the Psycho

social wellbeing of 100 children who were selected by purposive sampling technique. The effectiveness was

determined by paired t test and the association was explored by chi-square test, correlation is determined by

Karl Pearsons Correlation coefficient.

Results: A sample of 100 children were taken in the study, amongst 60% of children were in the age group

0f 7-9 years. 32% children were severely malnourished. 90% children had fair quality of life. The calculated

t value is 6.84 at 5% level of significance and the p value is less than 0.00001 which determines there is a

significant difference between the pre-test nutritional scores and Post-test nutritional scores of children. The

value of R is 0.0917, indicating the relationship existing between two variables is weak.

Conclusion: results revealed that more than 90% of children were having fair quality of life and 32% of

children are in severe malnutrition category. Hence it is concluded that thalassemia severely affects the

nutritional status and quality of life of children. In the present study multimodel interventional package has

played a significant role in improving the quality of life and nutritional status of children. Study recommends

for future researchers to conduct studies to improve other aspects of quality of life of thalassemic children.