Bone Marrow Transplant Long-Term Survivors’ Satisfaction with Quality of Life: Comparison with a Control Group

Purpose: To evaluate the global quality of life (QoL) of survivors with 10-year or more post-transplant, and to identify risk factors that interfere with well-being. Methods: This is a prospective analytic transversal study with 214 survivors of Bone Marrow Transplant (BMT) and 264 healthy people identified among blood donors, treated as the control group, of both sexes, 18 years or older. The protocol includes a demographic-socioeconomic questionnaire, World Health Organization Quality of Life (WHOQOL) and the Karnofsky Performance Status Scale. Results: 53.7% of the survivor group members are satisfied with their QoL. A similar result can be found in the control group (54.2%). Chronological maturity, anxiety, sexual difficulty, and being a provider are factors that interfere negatively in the QoL of male survivors. In female survivors, the risk factors are anxiety, low educational level, not having a stable partner, being a provider, and not being Caucasian. Conclusions: Survivors are as satisfied with their QoL as the control group. QoL is understood as a perceptive process composed of objective (functional and relational capacity) and subjective phenomenon (perceptive composition).