Quality of life and fatigue in Hodgkin's lymphoma patients

Quality of life and survival of patients with malignant diseases are improving thanks to the development in diagnostics and therapy.

We determined the quality of life and frequency and severity of fatigue with an EORTC QLQ-C30 questionnaire in 168 Hodgkin's lymphoma patients (85 women, 83 men). We scored all functional and symptom scales in cured patients (who were in complete remission for at least 10 years; mean period of survival after the treatment(s) was 16.61 years) and in those who suffered from late complications.

The global health status score (QL2) was significantly lower in patients who had late complications (mean QL2, 45.53) than in patients with no complications (mean QL2, 67.57, P < 0.001) and in cured patients (mean QL2, 52.5) than in those who were not disease free 10 years after the treatment or who were treated actively (mean QL2, 67.48, P < 0.001). We found that fatigue level (FA) was significantly higher in patients who had been treated more than 20 years before (FA score, 53.37) than in those who were undergoing treatment (FA score, 29.35, P = 0.03). A significantly higher FA score (FA, 48.72) was observed in patients who suffered from late complications of the treatment than in those who had no complications (FA, 31.88; P = 0.001). More comorbidity can cause higher fatigue scores than observed in these groups of Hodgkin's lymphoma patients.

Fatigue is more frequent than we think, and it has a strong effect on quality of life, so its early recognition and treatment is important and needs multidisciplinary cooperation.