Comparison of anxiety, pain and discomfort in two procedures of hematopoietic stem cell collection: leukacytapheresis and bone marrow harvest.

The aim of this study was to compare anxiety, pain and discomfort of cancer patients submitted to either peripheral blood progenitor cell collection (PBPCC) or bone marrow harvest (BMH). Patients, randomized (7/1993-2/1994), in view of autograft, to receive the first procedure or the second one, completed self-administered questionnaires. Anxiety was assessed by the State Trait Anxiety Inventory and pain using visual analogical scale (VAS) and McGill Pain questionnaire. Before the procedure, BMH patients (n = 25) experienced more anxiety (P < 0.01) and more trouble or inconvenience for having to come and stay at the hospital (P < 0.0001) than PBPCC patients (n = 40). Pain due to BMH is significantly higher than pain induced by PBPCC (P < 0.001 for VAS and total McGill score). However, patients submitted to PBPCC with a femoral catheter (n = 19) had significantly higher total McGill scores and sensory sub-scores than patients without it (n = 21). At discharge from the hospital, PBPCC patients expressed more positive judgements towards the collection procedure than BMH patients. These results suggest that a better patient acceptability of high-dose chemotherapy followed by autograft may be obtained by substituting PBPCC for BMH for stem cell collection.