Knowledge, Opinions, and Attitudes of Students of Warsaw Universities Toward Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation

Abstract

Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation is a method of treatment in many diseases, including oncology. For a large group of patients, such a therapy is a procedure that saves their health and life. Most of the transplants come from unrelated donors, which are still insufficient in comparison to the recipients in need. The purpose of the study to assess the knowledge, opinions, and attitudes of students of Warsaw universities toward hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. The survey was conducted among 351 students of Warsaw universities. The research method was a diagnostic survey, and the tool was the author's questionnaire. The statistical analysis was performed using the StatSoft Statistica 13.1 PL statistical package and Microsoft Office package. The respondents answered correctly on an average 59% of the analyzed issues. Medical students older than 25 and women had a higher level of knowledge; 41.6% of respondents were registered in the donor database, and this more often referred to medical students (P < .0001). The motivation for registering (97.3%) was the willingness to help another person. The unregistered reported that their lack of a decision on registration, among others, was because their general health condition made it impossible to become a donor (34.6%) or they had insufficient knowledge (31.7%)-this more often referred to nonmedical students (P < .0001). In addition, 55% of students would be interested in attending a meeting/lecture at their university about being a potential donor (including 63.1% of medical and 44.9% of nonmedical students). The knowledge of the surveyed students was at an average level, and the opinions and attitudes were mostly favorable. It seems that the organization of meetings on bone marrow donation at universities could enable a larger number of undecided students to decide to enter into the donor register.