Quality-of-life issues and symptoms reported by patients living with haematological malignancy: a qualitative study

Abstract

Background: Our aim was to identify health-related quality-of-life (HRQoL) issues and symptoms in patients with haematological malignancies (HMs) and develop a conceptual framework to reflect the inter-relation between them. Methods: A total of 129 patients with HMs were interviewed in a UK multicentre qualitative study. All interviews were audio recorded, transcribed and analysed using NVivo-11. Results: Overall, 34 issues were reported by patients and were grouped into two parts: quality of life (QoL) and symptoms. The most prevalent HRQoL issues were: eating and drinking habits; social life; physical activity; sleep; and psychological well-being. Furthermore, most prevalent disease-related symptoms were: tiredness; feeling unwell; breathlessness; lack of energy; and back pain. The most prevalent treatment side effects were: tiredness; feeling sick; disturbance in sense of taste; and breathlessness. Conclusions: Both HMs and their treatments have a significant impact on patients’ HRQoL, in particular on issues such as job-role change, body image and impact on finances.

Sleep problems and their interaction with physical activity and fatigue in hematological cancer patients during onset of high dose chemotherapy

“…Less time spent in physical activity is another complaint described by both solid and hematological cancer patients [13]. Indeed, patients affected by leukemia are reported to be less physically active even before the diagnosis [14].…”

Reliability of a Novel Hematological Malignancy Specific Patient-Reported Outcome Measure: HM-PRO

“…Similar finiding were reported by another systematic reviwer which focused on patients with multiple myeloma (Osborne et al, 2012;Goswami et al, 2019a). A new PRO measure, HM-PRO (hematological malignancy specific patient-reported outcome measure), has been recently developed to evaluate the HRQoL of patients with HMs in daily clinical practice as well as in research (Goswami et al, 2017;Goswami et al, 2020b;Goswami et al, 2020c).…”

Sleep problems and their interaction with physical activity and fatigue in hematological cancer patients during onset of high dose chemotherapy

“…The total score ranges between 0 and 21, where a lower score indicates lower impaired sleep. The cut-off value of 5 differentiates between good sleepers (0-5) and bad sleepers (6)(7)(8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20)(21).…”

“…Less time spent in physical activity is another complaint described by both solid and hematological cancer patients [11]. Indeed, patients affected by leukemia are reported to be less physically active even before the diagnosis [12].…”