gms | German Medical Science

Allogenic stem cell transplantation involves many somatic restrictions as well as psychosocial problems. The Tumor Biology Center in Freiburg, Germany, offers a specific in‑patient rehabilitation program for patients who have undergone allogenic stem cell transplantation. The main aims of this medical and psychosocial programme are to decrease the impairment due to these late effects and increase quality of life. The purpose of this study, sponsored by the German José Carreras Leukämie-Stiftung e.V., is to evaluate this rehabilitation programme. The analysis of prognostic factors should help to decide whether these medical and psychosocial measures are a necessary extension to the primary in-patient treatment at the transplantation centres and to show which patients derive the most benefit from the program. The study was designed as a prospective controlled trial with repeated measurements. The treatment group consists of patients taking part in the rehabilitation programme. Patients for the control group were out-patients recruited in their transplantation centres. There were four measurements over the time. Patients received a first questionnaire on entering the trial, which was on arrival at the Tumor Biology Center (treatment group) or at an aftercare appointment in their transplantation centre (control group). Rehabilitation patients completed the next questionnaire on leaving our clinic. Accordingly, the control patients received their second questionnaire about four to six weeks after the first. For both groups there were two follow-ups: six months and one year later. A total of 132 rehabilitation patients and 23 control group patients took part in the study. A matched-pairs strategy was chosen to compare control patients with matching partners selected from the treatment group. Additionally the whole rehabilitation group was described over the course of the study. The analysis reveals that the rehabilitation patients show poorer initial values than the control patients; thus proving that the assignment to in-patient rehabilitation occurs according to the needs of the patients. Both groups improved over the time of the study. Although most patients reach values comparable to those of healthy people, some have to continue to live with the restrictions resulting from the transplantation.