The purposes of this study were to: examine differences in health status, social support, post-traumatic growth, and psychological well-being among 140 bone marrow transplant (BMT) survivors and 104 age-, gender-, and education-matched participants; describe quality of life (QOL) domains that are most likely to deteriorate following BMT treatment; examine the relationships between QOL post-transplant and demographic, medical, and psychosocial variables; describe the extent of fear of recurrence among BMT survivors; describe the extent of adherence to treatment regimen among BMT survivors; and explore psychosocial changes that BMT survivors experience following cancer diagnoses and/or BMT treatment.
A descriptive/exploratory, cross-sectional study was conducted to assess quality of life following BMT. Subjects were recruited through hospital and clinic census forms and newspaper ads. Participants with cancer were at least three months out from their BMT. Both of the BMT and the comparison groups completed the Demographic Information Form, the Short Form-36 (SF-36), the Medical Outcome Study - Social Support Survey (MOS-SSS), the Post-Traumatic Growth Inventory (PTGI), and the Affect Balance Scale (ABS). In addition, BMT survivors group completed the following questionnaires: the Functional Assessment to Cancer Therapy-Bone Marrow Transplantation (FACT-BMT), the Mental Adjustment to Cancer (MAC), the Fear of Recurrence Scale (FRS), the General Adherence Scale (GAS), and the Psychosocial Change Form (PCF). Quantitative analysis consisted of descriptive statistics, analysis of variance, correlations, and t-tests. Narrative responses were analyzed using a phenomenological/hermeneutic approach.
Group differences were found in relation to health status, tangible social support, post-traumatic growth, and psychological well-being. Among BMT survivors, participants described their post-BMT quality of life as good. However, they experienced a number of specific functional impairments post-BMT. In particular, participants experienced lack of energy, pain, dissatisfaction with sexual lives, feeling distant from friends, worries about medical conditions, feeling sad, unfulfillment of work, inability to work, and dislike of bodily appearance. BMT survivors scored at the midrange of FRS and were adhering to their treatment regimen. Narrative analysis suggested that participants experienced negative as well as positive changes post-BMT.
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