Psychosocial, health and demographic characteristics of quality of life among patients with acute myeloid leukemia and malignant lymphoma who underwent autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation.

CONTEXT AND OBJECTIVE

This study evaluated the effect of selected psychosocial, health and demographic characteristics of quality of life (QOL) among patients treated with autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT).

DESIGN AND SETTING

This was a retrospective study at Charles University Hospital, Hradec Kralove.

METHODS

The Czech version of the international generic European Quality-of-Life questionnaire (EQ-5D) was applied to evaluate QOL among patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and malignant Hodgkins and non-Hodgkins lymphoma (ML). The total number of respondents was 36: 12 with AML (seven males and five females) and 24 with ML (11 males and 13 females). The mean age of AML respondents was 46 years and the mean age of ML respondents was 44.5 years.

RESULTS

Age, smoking status and education level had statistically significant effects on QOL among AML respondents (p < 0.05), and age had a statistically significant effect on QOL among ML respondents (p < 0.05). The overall QOL among AML and ML respondents was generally good: the mean EQ-5D score among AML respondents was 71.5% and among ML respondents it was 82.7%.

CONCLUSION

The QOL among AML and ML respondents treated with autologous HSCT was good. However, patients more than 50 years old, smokers and patients with lower education levels presented worse QOL. These findings need to be better evaluated in longitudinal studies, using large samples.