Health Related Quality of Life among Blood Cancer Patients in Pakistan: A Cross Sectional Survey

Abstract

The importance of health-related quality of life and its determinants including physical, emotional, and functional domains has long been recognized among blood cancer patients in the developed world but this concept is still in infancy in developing countries, including Pakistan. The objective of the study was to assess health related quality of life among blood cancer patients. A descriptive cross-sectional study design was used. A pre-validated questionnaire that is EORTC-QLQ-C30 was self-administered to a sample of 400 blood cancer patients selected using convenience sampling technique. After data collection, data was cleaned, coded, and entered in SPSS. Descriptive statistics comprising of frequency and percentages were calculated. Non-parametric tests Kruskal Wallis and Mann Whitney tests ( P ≤ .05) were performed to find out the differences among different variables. The results highlighted that lowest scores for EORTC-QLQ-C30 were observed in the domain of emotional functioning (3.38, ±35.790), followed by cognitive function (4.56, ±30.368) whereas highest scores were observed in the domain of physical functioning (40.92, ±35.484). Significant difference ( P ≤ .05) was observed among different domains of health-related quality of life of blood cancer patients treated in different sectors, provinces, setting, gender, and with different comorbidities. The present study concluded that blood cancer patients had poor health related quality of life in Pakistan. Emotional functioning and cognitive function were the most compromised health related quality of life domains among blood cancer patients. Females having blood cancer, those patients treated in private sector healthcare facilities, patients residing in tribal and rural setting had relatively better health related quality of life. No appropriate psychosocial care program for the blood cancer patients are available in Pakistan.

Evaluation of quality of life of gastrointestinal cancer patients presenting to a tertiary care hospital in Pakistan

“…Our Global QOL score was found to be comparable to international studies on GI cancer patients ranging from (55-76.8) [19][20][21][22]. When we compared our global QOL score with other studies on Pakistani population, we observe a better score in our GI cancer patients as compared to patients with blood cancer (25.95), breast cancer (48.33) and with different combination of cancer on chemotherapy (57.37) [9][10][11]. These differences can be explained by complete different spectrum of symptomatology, treatment options especially chemotherapeutic drugs and problems associated with those treatment modalities.…”

Quality of Life and Social Support Levels in Leukemia Patients

“…This study showed that, while financial difficulty had the highest average score among symptom scales, three symptoms were higher than the others; fatigue, insomnia, pain. Malik et al (2021) reported that the symptoms with the highest scores were insomnia, dyspnea, and diarrhea in the blood cancer patients group. AlFayyad et al ( 2020) reported that anorexia is a statistically significant predictor of clinically significant fatigue.…”

“…Pashos et al (2013) stated that in the CLL patient group, males had a better FACT-Leu total score than females. Malik et al (2021) highlighted relatively better HRQoL among female blood cancer patients. Pashos et al (2013) reported worse physical scores and fatigue scores in females than males in the CLL patient group.…”

“…In the study of Mierzynska et al (2020), it is reported that it is physical and social functioning for early-stage breast cancer cases and cognitive functioning for metastatic breast cancer cases. Malik et al (2021) reported that the highest mean score in the blood cancer group was physical function. Efficace et al (2019) reported that the highest mean score in the AML patient group at diagnosis was cognitive functioning.…”

“…When the literature on global QOL is examined; the mean global QOL was 49.30 points at diagnosis in the AML patient group (Efficace et al 2019), 76.9 points in early-stage breast cancer cases, and 57.6 points in metastatic breast cancer cases (Mierzynska et al, 2020). In a study conducted with a blood cancer patient group in Pakistan, the mean global QOL was 25.95 (Malik et al 2021). AlFayyad et al ( 2020) found poor health-related quality of life (HRQoL) mean scores using the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-Leukemia (FACT-Leu) scale in the adult leukemia patient group.…”