Health-related quality of life in transplant eligible multiple myeloma patients with or without early ASCT in the real-world setting

Abstract

There is no comparative health-related quality of life (HR-QoL) data of transplant eligible (TE) multiple myeloma (MM) patients undergoing early autologous stem cell transplantation (ASCT) and those without in the era of novel drugs. This study prospectively evaluated the serial HR-QoL in TE-MM using the EORTC QLQ-C30 and MY20 questionnaires. Barring the transient worsening in QoL one-month after ASCT, there was a comparable improvement in most QoL domains in both early-ASCT and no-early ASCT cohorts. Post-early-ASCT patients had higher global health scores (71.9 vs. 60.8, p < .05) than no-early ASCT at 12-months. Patients belonging to lower socioeconomic status (SES) were more likely not to undergo ASCT than middle-high SES patients (38.6% vs. 74.5%, p < .05). While age, gender had no impact on QoL, performance status, staging, and induction therapy impacted QoL. This study shows that early ASCT maintains QoL and should be encouraged in all TE-MM patients.

Keywords:

• Multiple myeloma
• early ASCT
• HR-QoL

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer for giving us the permission to use the EORTC QLQ-C30 and QLQ-MY20 Questionnaires for academic purposes.

Disclosure statement

All authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose.

Author contributions

MMA, DL, DB, SP, and PM designed and performed the research, MMA, DL, DB, and PM analyzed the data and wrote the paper. All authors were involved in providing clinical care to the patients and approved the final manuscript.