Quality of Life in Transfusion-Dependent Thalassemia Patients in Greece Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic.
Value Health Reg Issues
; 42: 100986, 2024 Jul.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-38723367
ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVES:
The peak of the COVID-19 pandemic was a challenging situation for transfusion-dependent thalassemia (TDT) patients. The objectives of this study were to measure the quality of life (QoL) in TDT patients during the COVID-19 lockdown restriction measures, compare the results with the pre-COVID-19 era, and evaluate the influence of sociodemographic and clinical factors on QoL.METHODS:
This was a cross-sectional study of 110 consecutively selected adult TDT patients, during the stringent lockdown restriction measures implemented in Greece. All participants completed a combination of 2 QoL questionnaires, the generic Short-Form Health Survey 36 version 2 and the disease-specific Transfusion-Quality of life (TranQol). We used the "1/2 SD method," a distribution-based approach to calculate minimal clinically important differences and clinically compare the QoL scores between the pre-COVID-19 and post-COVID-19 era. A backward stepwise linear regression was selected to explore the influence of potential predictors on TranQol scores.RESULTS:
The Short-Form Health Survey 36 version 2 and TranQol scores remained low but not clinically different compared with the pre-COVID-19 era. Older, married, and higher educated TDT patients exhibited significantly lower TranQol summary scores. The patients who reported a negative effect of the COVID-19 pandemic had significantly lower TranQol scores in summary and all subdomains except for school and career.CONCLUSIONS:
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the overall QoL of TDT patients was clinically similar to the status of the pre-COVID-19 era. Nevertheless, most of the significant QoL subdomains were negatively affected, and distinct groups of TDT patients were more vulnerable.Key words
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Quality of Life
/
Thalassemia
/
Blood Transfusion
/
COVID-19
Limits:
Adult
/
Female
/
Humans
/
Male
/
Middle aged
Country/Region as subject:
Europa
Language:
En
Journal:
Value Health Reg Issues
Year:
2024
Document type:
Article