ASH 2022: Quality of Life Improves Quickly in Survivors of Aggressive Lymphomas

Lymphomas are a potentially curable subset of cancers, but long-term treatment or disease effects may impact quality of life. Researchers, therefore, sought to determine how quality of life changed from diagnosis over up to nine years of follow-up in patients with aggressive forms of lymphoma.

The study, which included Carrie Thompson, MD, an LRF advisor faculty speaker for LRF Patient Education Programs as an author, studied more than 2,000 patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL), grade 3 follicular lymphoma, Hodgkin lymphoma, T-cell lymphoma, non-Hodgkin lymphoma not otherwise specified (NOS), B-cell lymphoma NOS, or composite lymphomas. Within nine months of diagnosis, patients completed a quality-of-life assessment of their physical, social/family, emotional, and functional well-being. Survivors, defined as those who were still alive with no
active disease or treatment within six years of assessment, were invited to complete the assessment again at one, two, three, six, and nine years after diagnosis.

At diagnosis (baseline), physical, emotional, and functional well-being were lower in people with aggressive lymphomas compared with historical estimates for the general United States (US) population; social/ family well-being were higher. However, quality of life with regard to all four measures of well-being increased over the entire follow-up period, with the greatest improvements seen in the first year after diagnosis. At all follow-up points after diagnosis, quality-of-life measures were higher in survivors of aggressive lymphomas than in the general US population.

Results were similar across all subtypes explored and in those who had not yet started treatment at baseline.

This study also included contributions from LRF SAB member and Past-Chair, Thomas M. Habermann, MD of Mayo Clinic Rochester; LRF grantee Gita Thanarajasingam, MD of Mayo Clinic Rochester; LRF SAB member Brian Link, MD of the University of Iowa; and LRF SAB member James Cerhan, MD, PhD of Mayo Clinic Rochester.