Quality of life in adult patients with acute myeloid leukemia receiving intensive and prolonged chemotherapy -- a longitudinal study.

Intensification of treatment for acute myeloid leukemia (AML) in adult patients resulted in a substantial improvement in long-term prognosis. Therefore, the assessment of quality of life (QL) of patients undergoing treatment is of growing interest. This study was designed to evaluate QL in patients with AML treated according to the protocol of the German AML-Cooperative Group (Münster, Germany). The EORTC QLQ-C 30 questionnaire was used to analyze QL throughout therapy, evaluating defined specific parameters at 12 different time-points. Sixty-one patients were recruited within the first 30 months of the study. Those 28 patients who have completed the course of inpatient treatment (n=28) are evaluated for changes in the conceptually distinct QL domains: Physical Functioning (P<0.001), Role Functioning (P=0.001), Emotional Functioning (P < 0.001) and Social Functioning (P=0.007) improve significantly from beginning of chemotherapy to the end of inpatient treatment. Individual assessment of Global Health Status and Subjective QL improves significantly over the same time (P< 0.001). At the end of inpatient treatment patients suffer significantly less from fatigue, nausea/emesis, loss of appetite and sleep disturbance (P < 0.001). Although most patients with AML eventually relapse, the evaluation of QL in patients undergoing treatment shows that subjective benefit outweighs the adverse effects of antileukemic therapy.