RESEARCH ARTICLE
Influence of Working Memory on Academic Achievement and Quality of Life in Children with Beta-Thalassemia Major
Uni Gamayani1, *, Ni Luh Meidha Dini Lestari1, Ahmad Rizal Ganiem1, Ramdan Panigoro2
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2019Volume: 12
First Page: 76
Last Page: 83
Publisher ID: TOPSYJ-12-76
DOI: 10.2174/1874350101912010076
Article History:
Received Date: 29/10/2018Revision Received Date: 03/01/2019
Acceptance Date: 10/03/2019
Electronic publication date: 28/03/2019
Collection year: 2019
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Background:
Children with beta-thalassemia major may suffer from working memory impairment. For a more refined understanding of this issue, we assessed working memory function in beta-thalassemia children and evaluated its influence on academic achievement and quality of life.
Methods:
This was a cross-sectional study involving 60 beta-thalassemia children aged 8-12 years. All participants underwent a working memory assessment using the digit span and were interviewed using academic achievement and Indonesian version of PedsQL 4.0 questionnaires. Working memory in beta-thalassemia children significantly influences their quality of life, both directly (β=0.32) and indirectly, through their academic achievement (β=0.639). Longer duration of transfusion (p=0.01) is significantly related to poorer working memory, while lower hemoglobin level (p=0.81) and higher ferritin level (p=0.24) are not significantly associated with working memory.
Conclusion:
We concluded that working memory influences the quality of life in beta-thalassemia children, both directly and indirectly, through their academic achievement.