Objective: Intraarticular bleedings in hemophilia patients and movement restrictions and joint deformities that occur as a result of these bleedings constitute an important health problem and deteriorate the life quality of the child. The most frequently bleeding joints in hemophilia involve knee, elbow and ankle joints. The recurrent intraarticular bleedings in hemophilia might cause “chronic hemophilic arthropathy” and permanent impairments might develop as a result of the total loss of joint motion range. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relation between intraarticular bleedings and symptom severity of ADHD and disruptive behavior disorders in children and adolescents with hemophilia.
Method: Twenty-four males with hemophilia aged between 6.2-14.1 (9.85±2.46) were included in the study. During the interview made with children and their mothers, their sociodemographic features and frequency of intraarticular bleedings were examined. Following the interview, mothers of cases filled out the Turgay DSM-IV Based Disruptive Behavior Disorder Screening and Rating Scale. SPSS for Windows 16.0 software was used for the statistical analysis.
Results: As a result of the correlation analysis, no relation was detected between the symptom severity of attention deficit and frequency of intraarticular bleeding (p>0.05). A statistically significant positive relation was found between the frequency of bleedings within knee and ankle joints and symptom severities of hyperactivity/impulsivity, oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) and conduct disorder (CD) (p<0.05). No significant relation was detected between the frequency of bleedings within the elbow joint and subscale scores of disruptive behavior disorder (p>0.05).
Conclusion: Our study results have made us think that the frequency of bleeding especially within knee and ankle joints is related with the symptom severity of hyperactivity/impulsivity, ODD and CD, and children having frequent bleedings within these joints should be evaluated from this aspect, along with the prophylactic treatment.