Objective: To investigate the quality of life of Chinese malignant patients who treated with the high dose chemoradiotherapy combined with autologous stem cell transplantation (ASCT).
Methods: The data of 89 patients who answer the EORTC QLQ-C30 Chinese version 3.0 after finished ASCT and disease free were analyzed using SPSS 10.0.
Results: The score of global health status and functional assessment were near or over 80, more than 80 percent of patient had good or very good global health status or function, the patients who were experiencing moderate or severe financial dysfunction, fatigue, dyspnea, sleeping disturbance and diarrhea were in 72.5% (65/89), 50.6% (45/89), 42.7% (38/89), 33.7% (30/89) and 32.5% (29/89) respectively. The score of dyspnea in female patients was significant higher than male patients (P = 0.024). The score of global health status (P = 0.000), physical function (P = 0.000), role function (P = 0.031) and social function (P = 0.029) became higher significantly with time from transplantation and the score of fatigue became lower (P = 0.020). The Hodgkin's lymphoma patients had higher score significantly in nausea & vomiting (P = 0.002) and dyspnea (P = 0.006) than NHL. The age at transplantation and evaluation took none effect on the score.
Conclusion: Most patient have good global health status and function after autologous stem cell transplantation, they are more suffered from financial dysfunction, fatigue, dyspnea, sleeping disturbance and diarrhea. Females have more dyspnea symptoms, the quality of life of patient will improve gradually with the time from transplantation, the Hodgkin's lymphoma patients have more symptoms than non-Hodgkin's lymphoma patients, we do not find any effect of age at transplantation and assessment on the quality of life.