Adults Thalassemia Unit-2nd Department of Internal Medicine, Aristotle University, Hippokration General Hospital, Thessaloniki, Greece.
Department of Pediatrics, Division of Hematology/Oncology, University of Ottawa, Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario, Ottawa, ON, Canada.
Value Health Reg Issues. 2024 Jul;42:100986. doi: 10.1016/j.vhri.2024.100986. Epub 2024 May 8.
The peak of the COVID-19 pandemic was a challenging situation for transfusion-dependent thalassemia (TDT) patients. The objectives of this study were to measure the quality of life (QoL) in TDT patients during the COVID-19 lockdown restriction measures, compare the results with the pre-COVID-19 era, and evaluate the influence of sociodemographic and clinical factors on QoL.
This was a cross-sectional study of 110 consecutively selected adult TDT patients, during the stringent lockdown restriction measures implemented in Greece. All participants completed a combination of 2 QoL questionnaires, the generic Short-Form Health Survey 36 version 2 and the disease-specific Transfusion-Quality of life (TranQol). We used the "1/2 SD method," a distribution-based approach to calculate minimal clinically important differences and clinically compare the QoL scores between the pre-COVID-19 and post-COVID-19 era. A backward stepwise linear regression was selected to explore the influence of potential predictors on TranQol scores.
The Short-Form Health Survey 36 version 2 and TranQol scores remained low but not clinically different compared with the pre-COVID-19 era. Older, married, and higher educated TDT patients exhibited significantly lower TranQol summary scores. The patients who reported a negative effect of the COVID-19 pandemic had significantly lower TranQol scores in summary and all subdomains except for school and career.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the overall QoL of TDT patients was clinically similar to the status of the pre-COVID-19 era. Nevertheless, most of the significant QoL subdomains were negatively affected, and distinct groups of TDT patients were more vulnerable.
COVID-19 大流行高峰期对依赖输血的地中海贫血症（TDT）患者来说是一个具有挑战性的情况。本研究的目的是测量 COVID-19 封锁限制措施期间 TDT 患者的生活质量（QoL），将结果与 COVID-19 之前的时期进行比较，并评估社会人口学和临床因素对 QoL 的影响。
这是一项在希腊实施严格封锁限制措施期间对 110 例连续选择的成年 TDT 患者进行的横断面研究。所有参与者都完成了通用的简短健康调查 36 版本 2 和疾病特异性输血生活质量（TranQol）调查问卷的组合。我们使用“1/2 SD 方法”，一种基于分布的方法来计算最小临床重要差异，并在 COVID-19 之前和之后的时期比较 QoL 评分的临床差异。选择向后逐步线性回归来探索潜在预测因素对 TranQol 评分的影响。
简短健康调查 36 版本 2 和 TranQol 评分仍然较低，但与 COVID-19 之前的时期相比没有临床差异。年龄较大、已婚和受过高等教育的 TDT 患者的 TranQol 综合评分明显较低。报告 COVID-19 大流行产生负面影响的患者的 TranQol 评分在综合和所有子领域都明显较低，除了学校和职业领域。
在 COVID-19 大流行期间，TDT 患者的整体生活质量在临床上与 COVID-19 之前的状况相似。然而，大多数重要的 QoL 子领域都受到了负面影响，并且 TDT 患者的不同群体更容易受到影响。
