The influence of transient loss of consciousness in children on the health-related quality of life indicators

Abstract

Abstract. Any acute, recurrent or inflammatory disease can cause numerous changes in various areas of a child's life from daily duties to emotional and cognitive development, self-esteem, and relationships with other people, as well as can negatively affect his/her contacts with peers, functioning in school or family. The aim of the study was the search for modern scientific achievements in the field of research on the quality of life among children with transient loss of consciousness and their families for a better understanding of the state of the possibilities of using this indicator in the evaluation of the effectiveness of the carried-out treatment and prevention measures. Materials and methods. The following terms were used for the search: «syncope», «epilepsy», «psychogenic transient loss of consciousness», and «quality of life», and «children» in the PubMed Medline and Scopus databases. Only English-language full-text articles published between January 2013 and December 2022 were included in the search. Results. During the past 10 years numerous studies have been published on health-related quality of life in children with epilepsy, and there was only one study among children with vasovagal syncope. Given the typically benign etiology of this disease, children are at high risk of psychological health worsening after experiencing a syncope episode. A diagnosis of epilepsy in early childhood has a profound effect on the child's psychological and physical development. It is important that epilepsy slows down the achievement of children's independence and complicates social relationships and cognitive processes. A number of authors drew attention to the lack of relationship between the quality of life and the frequency of psychogenic non-epileptic seizures in children and proved the key influence of depression and somatoform disorders on the reduction of quality of life. Conclusions. Health-related quality of life study is an important tool for the understanding of disease impact on child’s daily life and family members, which allows you to effectively recognize symptoms for the purpose of their timely correction, and is the final point in assessing the effectiveness of treatment and prevention measures, as well as quality of public health services. The relevance of further quality of life studies in children under the various types of syncope is due to the extremely limited results of observations in this group of patients.