Palliative Care Helpful for Bone Marrow Transplant Patients

According to a new study, integrating palliative care into the treatment plan of cancer patients undergoing hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HCT) can improve their quality of life.

Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital, Duke University, and other institutions conducted a randomized clinical trial among 160 adults with hematologic malignancies–such as leukemia and lymphoma–undergoing autologous or allogeneic HCT, in order to assess the effect of inpatient palliative care on patient- and caregiver-reported outcomes during hospitalization for HCT, and three months after transplantation. Results indicated significantly better quality of life (QOL) scores for those receiving the palliative care intervention than for the usual treatment group, both at the two-week and the three-month assessments. Patients receiving the palliative care intervention also reported lower levels of depression, anxiety, and physical symptoms at two weeks, and continued to experience less depression, better QOL, and fewer post-traumatic stress symptoms than the control group at three months. Click here for more details.