Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Childhood obesity is associated with several complications related to physical and mental health. Determining health-related quality of life (HRQOL) is an important outcome measure to ensure patients receive the appropriate care.

Aim: We report the baseline HRQOL in a group of UK children and adolescents with severe obesity who were managed in a Tier 3 weight management service.

Methods: Paediatric quality of life (PedsQL) 4.0 Generic Core Scales questionnaire, a validated tool was used.

Results: 53 patients completed the PedsQL measure at baseline (at the time of their first assessment by the Tier 3 service). The average age was 13.3 years (range: 6-17) with 50.9% (27/53) of the cohort being female. The median body mass index (BMI) was 40.6 kg/m² (IQR 35.1-46.0). Table 1 shows the results for the child self-reported tool. The transformed scores are out of 100, with the highest score indicating better HRQOL. The results showed a median total score of 57/100 (IQR 45.3-64.8). The patients scored lower in psychosocial health, compared to physical health. All results are lower than those previously published in healthy individuals (mean range across scores 79.2 to 87.8). The linear regression analysis with BMI as the independent variable showed no significant association between BMI and the individual scales probably because all BMI measures were at the higher range.

Discussion: The results have shown that HRQOL in children and young people with significant obesity is low with the total score being only 57/100. Psychosocial health is impacted more than physical health. This baseline data will help provide targeted support for improving mental health in this cohort and can also be used to monitor the response to the input from the MDT weight management service.