Health-Related Quality of Life in Survivors of Allogeneic Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation Employing the Mexican Reduced-Intensity Conditioning

Background: Quality of life (QOL) is an important consideration in the counseling, implementation, and post treatment management of arduous treatments for life-threatening conditions, such as allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (allo-HCT).

Material and methods: QOL was analyzed in leukemia patients who underwent allo-HCT using reduced intensity conditioning (RIC) on an outpatient basis at either the Centro de Hematología y Medicina Interna de Puebla of the Clínica Ruiz or the Hematology Service of the Internal Medicine Department of the Hospital “Dr. José Eleuterio González” of the Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León, and who had survived above 12 months after the allograft, who could be approached, who were in a continued complete remission - with or without graft versus host disease - and who were willing to respond to the questionnaire. Thirty five patients fulfilling these requirements were included, and a sex and age-matched group of 35 reference subjects was also studied.

Results: Allografted patients were found to have a slightly better mental component summary than the reference subjects (53.23 versus 48.66 points, p = 0.01), whereas the physical component summary did not show a difference (54.53 versus 52.05 points, p = 0.59). Most of the differences between allografted individuals and reference subjects controls were not significant. 

Conclusions: These data suggest that allografted individuals employing our RIC regimen, enjoy a health-related quality of life similar to that of reference subjects, adding, another advantage of this method of conducting stem cell allografting. However, more work needs to be done to elucidate the impact of RIC on QOL post- allo-HCT.