Magnitude of Stress among Parents of Children with Cardiac Malformation in Tertiary Care Hospitals Peshawar

Abstract

Background: Congenital Heart Defects (CHDs) are inborn anomalies or mal-formations of heart. These are the most common type of birth anomalies, approximately 1-2% babies are delivered with cardiac anomalies all over the world. CHDs are some of these deformities that disturb the lives of effected child as well as parents of the effected child. Studies from Pakistan have only reported incidence and risk factors of CHDs and have not identified their association with parental stress. Aim: The aim of this study was to identify the magnitude of parental stress caused by child diseased status. Methodology: This was a descriptive cross-sectional study. 387 participants was the sample size, calculated through online software open-epi. Every parent fulfilling the inclusion criteria was selected through Consecutive Sampling technique. And, data was collected through an adopted questionnaire. Results: Majorities (60.2%) of the study participants were male. The mean overall score of stress was 64.36 with a Standard Deviation of ±6.24534. A strong association was identified in the category of gender, females were more in stress than the male (Chi-square = 42.66, P < 0.001). Conclusion: The outcomes of the current study show that parents of the CHD diagnosed kids were in stress. There was a major role of demographical variable in the level of outcome variable “stress” among parents of CHD diagnosed children, such as gender, age, income, occupation, and education level.