Page 105 - Effects and Efficacy of (Laparoscopic) Gastrostomy Placement in Children - Josephine Franken

mean difference with 95% confidence intervals. Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS 22.0 statistical package (IBM, USA). Statistical significance was defined by p-values of less than 0.05.
ResULTs
Three hundred patients had undergone GP between January 2004 and December 2011. Out of these patients, 150 patients and/or their caregivers (50.0%) agreed to participate in the current study. Median follow-up time between GP and HRQoL assessment was 4.0 years (interquartile range (IQR) 2.9 – 6.2). Figure 1 depicts an overview of patient inclusion. Out of 150 patients included, 22 caregivers of children (14.7%) did not completely fill out the PedsQLTM questionnaire in one or multiple subdomains of HRQoL.
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Figure 1. Flowchart of patient inclusion
Legend. GP: gastrostomy placement; UMCU University Medical Center Utrecht
Patient characteristics
Patient characteristics are described in Table 3 for both responders and non-responders. The main underlying pathologies were NI (70.7%), cystic fibrosis (11.3%) and cardiac disease (4.7%). NI was clinically manifested as psychomotor retardation, epilepsy, microcephaly, spasticity, visual impairment and/or hypotonia.
During follow-up, 26 patients died because of causes unrelated to gastrostomy. Causes of death were deterioration of neurologic disease (n=23), cystic fibrosis (n=2) and advanced cardiac disease (n=1). These patients could consequently not be included.
Gastrostomy use and its complications.
After GP, the gastrostomy was still in place in 87% of patients. Minor gastrostomy- related complications occurred in the majority of patients (90.7%), mainly consisting of hypergranulation (60.7%), infection of the gastrostomy site (48.7%), dislodgement of the
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