Assessment of quality of life in children who have undergone hypospadias repair

Background/Introduction: The quality of life is a major concern in children who have undergone hypospadias repair; however there is paucity of data.
AIMS: To compare quality of life in children who have undergone hypospadias repair, as interpreted by child and parents.Also, to correlate the quality of life assessment with different types of hypospadias, surgical techniques and between staged and single repairs.
Material and Methods: An observational cross-sectional study was done at a single center from November 2014 to September 2016in which 50 children,who had undergone hypospadias repair,were enrolled. Quality of life assessment was done with the help of direct questionnaire from patients and parents, using proforma of Paediatric Quality of Life Inventory TM (PedsQL) TM 4.0 Generic Core Scale- Standard that assesses 4 domains namely, physical (8 items), psychological (5 items), social (5 items) and school functioning (5 items). The data was analyzed using SAS 9.2 statistical software.
The age ranged from 2 years to 17 years at the time of enrollment. The follow up period post-surgery ranged from 6 months to 8.4 years. The study groups were divided based on location of meatus and as those undergone single stage repair, into distal penile hypospadias (DPH)[n=28], mid penile hypospadias (MPH)[n=11] and proximal penile hypospadias (PPH)[n=11].44/50 patients underwent single stage repair (88%), of which TIP was the most common approach (86.36%).
Results: Both parents and subjects enjoyed good quality of life (> 92% domain scores). DPH had better quality of life in comparison to MPH and PPH. Quality of life was better in single stage repairs irrespective of TIP and non-TIP repair.
Conclusions: Thehypospadiacs and their parents were satisfied with cosmetic outcome with different types of repairs and enjoyed good quality of life.