The quality of life of adult survivors of childhood hematopoietic cell transplant.
Survival rates after myeloablative hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) in childhood have improved. We conducted a cross-sectional study evaluating the quality of life (QOL) of 214 adult survivors of a childhood HCT compared with controls using standardized self-report measures with strong psychometric properties to evaluate physical function, psychological function and cognitive symptoms. From these results we conducted a multivariate analysis of risk factors. This analysis for physical functioning showed poorer function among myeloid disease survivors compared with patients with all other diagnoses (P=0.02), men functioned better than women (P=0.05) and those >18 years after transplant functioned more poorly than those <18 years after transplant (P=0.05). Psychological functioning showed that those who received more therapy and females were more likely to be depressed (P=0.03) and (P=0.005). Perceived cognitive symptoms showed that female survivors had more symptoms than male survivors (P=0.01), and those receiving more preceding therapy compared with those with less preceding therapy (P=0.001) or cranial irradiation compared with those without cranial irradiation (P=0.002) had more perceived cognitive symptoms. Overall, these data indicate that the majority of adult survivors of a childhood transplant are functioning well, but some have problems that need to be addressed.
Sanders
J E
JE
Clinical Research Division, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, WA 98109, USA. jsanders@fhcrc.org
Hoffmeister
P A
PA
Storer
B E
BE
Appelbaum
F R
FR
Storb
R F
RF
Syrjala
K L
KL
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D018380:Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011788:Quality of Life; D017741:Survivors; D055815:Young Adult