Health-Related Quality of Life in leukemia Survivors of Allogeneic Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation Employing the Mexican Reduced-Intensity Conditioning

Quality of life (QOL) is an important consideration in the counseling, implementation, and post-treatment management of arduous treatments for life-threatening conditions such as allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (allo-HCT). Objective: To analyze the QOL of leukemia patients allografted with the Mexican reduced-intensity conditioning regimen in two Mexican academic medical centers. Material and methods: By means of the quality metric short form 36 version 2 to measure generic health concepts, relevant QOL was analyzed in leukemia patients who underwent allo-HCT using reducedintensity conditioning on an outpatient basis at either the Centro de Hematologia y Medicina Interna de Puebla of the Clinica Ruiz or the Hematology Service of the Internal Medicine Department of the Hospital “Dr. Jose Eleuterio Gonzalez” of the Universidad Autonoma de Nuevo Leon, and who had survived more than 12 months after the allograft, who could be approached, who were in a continued complete remission (with or without graft-versus-host disease), and who were willing to respond to the questionnaire. Thirty-five patients fulfilling these requirements were included, and a sex- and age-matched group of 35 reference subjects was also studied. Results: Allografted patients were found to have a slightly better mental component summary than the reference subjects (53.23 vs. 48.66 points; p = 0.01), whereas the physical component summary did not show a difference (54.53 vs. 52.05 points; p = 0.59). Most of the differences between allografted individuals and reference subject controls were not significant. Conclusions: Despite several sources of bias, these data suggest that allografted individuals employing the Mexican reduced-intensity conditioning regimen enjoy a health-related QOL life similar to that of reference subjects, adding another advantage of this method of conducting stem cell allografts. However