Factors influencing health-related quality of life for patients after hematopoietic stem cell transplantation: a single institution analysis

Abstract

 Investigation of the factors that impair health-related quality of life (QOL) is important for designing nursing intervention. Forty patients who underwent either allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (allo-HCT) (n=14) or autologous-HCT (auto-HCT) (n=26) participated in this QOL study using the SF-36. The survey was administered once a year for three years after HCT. To define parameters specific to allo-HCT, we interviewed the patients with a questionnaire (PN sheet) using the Patient Needs Assessment Tool and chronic graft-versus-host disease (cGVHD) severity defined by NIH in the final survey. The median age was 63 years, and the median follow-up was 50 months, ranging from 2-90 months. The scores of Physical Functioning (PF), Role-Physical, Vitality, and Physical Component Summary of allo-HCT patients were significantly lower than auto-HCT patients 4 years after HCT. When we examined the items reducing QOL score using the PN sheet, we found that an item for cGVHD reduced QOL scores of PF and Mental Health (MH), and difficulty of reinstatement reduced QOL scores of MH. These findings suggested that intervention in the symptoms of cGVHD and not quitting work would lead to improvement of the QOL. The PN sheet was useful to extract factors for QOL improvement.