Bulletin
of the Multinational Center
of Quality of Life Research № 9-10

N.V. Stancheva, E.V. Semenova, M.A. Ovsyannikova, M.D. Vladovskaya, S.A. Andreev, T.P. Nikitina, A.V. Kishtovich, T.I. Ionova, L.S. Zubarovskaya, B.V. Afanasiev

Quality of life and symptom assessment in long-term survivors of childhood blood cancer after allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT)

Quality of life and symptoms in long-term survivors of childhood blood cancer after allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation were studied. 34 patients were included in the study, the control group consisted of 114 healthy children. Quality of life was studied using PedsQL, MOS SF-36, and FACT-BMT questionnaires.
To analyse prevalence and severity of symptoms the following questionnaires were used: New Jersey Pediatric Cancer Symptom Inventory, Smiley Faces Scale, and MD Anderson Symptom Inventory. Long-term surivors of childhood blood cancer experienced decreased physical, psychological and social functioning which varied in different age groups.
Quality of life of survivors was lower than of healthy respondents, however these differencies were not significant. The longer the time after transplantation the better the quality of life of survivors. Most survivors had symptoms; their prevalence and severity depended on age, terms after transplantation, presence of chronic GvHD.
Statistically significant positive correlations between the presence of long-term complications and the degree of symptom severity were obtained. The results demonstrated the value of monitoring of quality of life and symptoms in survivors of childhood blood cancer after allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation at different time-points post-transplant.