Quality of Life Among Mothers Caring for Children With Cancer at a Tertiary Cancer Hospital in Bangladesh: A Cross-Sectional Study

BackgroundMothers caring for children with cancer often assume intensive clinical, emotional, and household responsibilities.Evidence on their cancer-related quality of life in Bangladesh remains limited.This study assessed caregiver quality of life and its relationships with maternal, household, and caregiving characteristics. MethodsThis hospital-based cross-sectional study was conducted among 178 mothers at the National Institute of Cancer Research and Hospital, Dhaka, from July 2018 to June 2019 using convenience sampling.Face-to-face interviews collected sociodemographic and caregiving data.Quality of life was measured using a 34-item modified Caregiver Quality of Life Index-Cancer (CQOLC)-derived score (range 0-136); under the studyspecific coding, higher scores represented poorer quality of life.Descriptive statistics, Pearson correlations, and comparisons of mean scores across subgroups were used in this exploratory analysis, and all associations were unadjusted. ResultsParticipants had a mean age of 30.20 years (SD 5.98); 166 (93.3%) were homemakers, and 161 (90.4%) lived in nuclear families.Mean daily caregiving time was 9.38 hours (SD 2.54).The median modified CQOLCderived total score was 80 (range 51-108).Higher total scores were correlated with more daily caregiving hours (r = 0.366, p < 0.001), longer caregiving duration (r = 0.192, p = 0.010), and older maternal age (r = 0.165, p = 0.027), whereas monthly household income was inversely correlated with the total score (r = -0.183,p = 0.014).Mean total scores also differed by housing type (p = 0.006). ConclusionsWithin this sample, greater daily caregiving time showed the strongest relationship with poorer studyspecific quality-of-life scores; longer caregiving duration, older maternal age, and lower household income were also weakly associated with poorer scores.The findings suggest that caregiver screening and practical and psychosocial support may be useful in pediatric oncology, but they should be interpreted cautiously because of the modified instrument without reliability testing, the cross-sectional design, and single-center sampling.