Quality of Life in Patients With Thalassemia Major and Intermedia in Kerman-Iran (I.R.)

Abstract

Thalassemia is the most common hemoglobin disorder in the world and thalassemia major and intermedia stand among the most severe forms. Due to recent improvements in treatment, patients with thalassemia have longer life expectancies; hence it is of utmost importance to pay careful attention to their quality of life together with life expectancy. This study was conducted to assess the quality of life in patients with thalassemia and also to compare it between thalassemia major and intermedia. In this cross-sectional study, patients who referred for blood transfusion or follow-up visits were evaluated for their quality of life (QOL). Short Form-36 questionnaire was applied to evaluate QOL. In this study, 308 patients with a mean age of 22.95±4.82 years were evaluated. The scores of QOL were regarded as moderate in eight domains under evaluation; the least score was given to General Health (53.05±16.96) whereas the highest score was given to Physical Functioning (67.95±22.68). The QOL in the patients with thalassemia major was better than those with thalassemia intermedia regarding Physical Functioning and Role Limitation Emotional domains. Compared to injecting chelators, patients who received oral chelators showed to have a better QOL considering Social Functioning and Mental Health domain. The patients under study didn’t have a satisfying QOL ; the QOL of patients with thalassemia major was better than that of patients with thalassemia intermedia in only 2 domains of sf-36(Physical Functioning & Role limitation-Emotional). It is then essential that experts pay proper attention to improve QOL among patients.

Quality of Life Among Thalassemia Children Patients in the Gaza Strip

“…These findings revealed that patients and their families can adapt to the disease burden and can live a near normal life as others; they go to school and perform their homework, play with peers and go to tourism. This result is inconsistent with the study of Safizadeh and Farahmandinia [26] which revealed that the lowest score by their participants was for the school domain.…”

“…These results are consistent with the results of [26,27] which revealed that the physical function had the lowest scores among all dimensions of their studies. Furthermore; other studies revealed that health-related QOL among patients with major/intermediate beta thalassemia is associated with poor physical health [28].…”

“…This result is inconsistent with [26] who conducted a cross sectional study to evaluate the QOL in thalassemia children patients in Iran. Their findings showed that female participants had a higher score in all domains except for bodily pain when compared to the male participants.…”

Comparison of Blood Transfusion Plus Chelation Therapy and Bone Marrow Transplantation in Patients with ??-Thalassemia: Application of SF-36, EQ-5D, and Visual Analogue Scale Measures

“…3,8,[16][17][18][19][20] This study is the first to investigate and compare QoL in patients receiving blood transfusion and bone morrow transplantation. Iran is one of the pioneers in using BMT for β-thalassemia patients, 25 and thus this study can be remarkable.…”

“…14,15 One of the most important issues in economic evaluation is measuring and evaluating different aspects of a patient's HRQoL. 15 Since all studies on HRQoL in β-thalassemia patients of Iran have focused on those who use blood transfusion, 3,8,[16][17][18][19][20] we decided to compare HRQoL in patients that use blood transfusion plus iron chelation (BTIC) therapy and those who have had bone marrow transplantation (BMT) using 2 different multiattribute quality of life (QoL) scales. In addition, we tried to assess the effects of different socio-economic characteristics on HRQoL.…”