Abstract
e18220 Background: Whilst a substantial body of knowledge is available on the genetics and biology of MDS, very little is known on quality of life of these patients. We aimed to 1) examine patient-reported symptom prevalence in newly diagnosed MDS patients by disease risk at diagnosis; 2) investigate prevalence of other key symptoms by fatigue severity. Methods: Newly diagnosed MDS patients were recruited in an international prospective observational study from Nov. 2008 to Dec. 2018. As per standard practice, all patients were classified according to the International Prognostic Scoring System (IPSS) that identifies four risk subgroups of patients, i.e. low, intermediate-1 (i.e., lower risk, LR), intermediate-2, and high-risk (i.e., higher risk, HR). At baseline (i.e., pretreatment) patients also completed the validated FACIT-Fatigue scale and the EORTC QLQ-C30 questionnaires. Based on the FACIT-Fatigue median score, two groups were also identified: a lower and a higher fatigue group. Results: Out of 929 patients enrolled, 914 patients were available for current analysis of whom 496 with LR (median age of 74 years) and 418 with HR (median age of 72 years). Prevalence (i.e., with any level of concern) of symptoms by disease risk group is reported in Table. Patients with higher fatigue had a significantly higher prevalence of many other symptoms, such as pain (p < .001), dyspnea (p < .001), insomnia (p < .001), appetite loss (p < .001), diarrhea (p < .001) and constipation (p < .001) than patients with lower fatigue. To illustrate, moderate to severe dyspnea was reported by 38% of patients with higher fatigue and only by 5% of patients who reported lower fatigue. Conclusions: Pretreatment symptom prevalence in newly diagnosed MDS is high, and broadly similar in LR and HR patients. Regardless of disease severity at diagnosis, fatigue is associated with a substantial burden of other symptoms. [Table: see text]
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