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.