Bulletin
of the Multinational Center
of Quality of Life Research № 5-6

OS. Uspenskaya, D.A. Fedorenko, M.O. Ivanova, A.V. Kishtovich, T.I. Ionova, A.A. Novik

Fatigue and its interference with quality of life in patients with hematological malignances

The purposes of the study were to examine fatigue severity and prevalence in patients with advanced hematological malignancies (N=157) and to define its impact on patients' quality of life.
Patients completed Brief Fatigue Inventory (BFI) and SF-36. Prevalence of fatigue varied significantly between different malignancies. Most frequently (96%) fatigue was reported in patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) and multiple myeloma (MM).
Moderate-to-severe fatigue was more frequently observed in CLL (68%) and MM patients (62.5%) and rarer reported by patients with indolent lymphomas (INL) (14.3%).
Integral Quality of Life Index (IQLI) was used to examine quality of life across different hematological malignancies. Patients with chronic myeloblastic leukemia (CML), CLL and MM exhibited the greatest reduction of functioning while aggressive lymphoma patients (ANL) and Hodgkin disease (HD) patients had moderate quality of life impairment and INL patients - mild impairment.
Increasing fatigue severity to moderate-to-severe level led to significant worsening of quality of life.
The quality of life profile deformation was observed in patients with moderate-to-severe fatigue while no deformation was found in patients with no fatigue.