Families of people with Marfan syndrome. The relationship between the functioning of the family system and the life quality of the affected persons

Objectives: The purpose of the study was to analyze the functioning of afamily as perceived by a person with Marfan syndrome and to look for relationships between the characteristics of the system and the overall quality of life of the ill.

Methods: Participants included 33 individuals with Marfan syndrome and 33 individuals without chronic illness. We used the Family Evaluation Scale - the Polish adaptation of the FACES-IVby D.H. Olson and the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) by Diener, Emmons, Larson and Griffin.

Results: People with Marfan syndrome perceive their families as significantly less coherent and significantly more disengaged than people without chronic illness. This family system of people with Marfan syndrome can be characterized by low scores on the "Cohesion" and "Flexibility" and high scores on the other four scales showing the level of imbalance of the family as a system, which makes this family profile similar to an ‛unbalanced' system. Life satisfaction of people with Marfan syndrome correlated positively with "Cohesion", "Flexibility" and "Family Satisfaction" as features of family system perceived by them.

Conclusions: The obtained results confirm the importance of supporting families of people with Marfan syndrome and specialist help aimed at dealing with emotional burden related to the health of the patient.