The Severity of Fatigue Among Bone Marrow Transplantation Patients

Abstract

Background: Fatigue interferes with the individual´s functioning and quality of life in cancer patients specifically, after chemotherapy and post–bone marrow transplantation (BMT), fatigue is not adequately addressed and prioritized among health care providers. Aim: The purpose of this study is to determine the severity and prevalence of fatigue among cancer patients post-BMT after receiving chemotherapy. Methods: A descriptive, cross-sectional and correlational design was used, Piper fatigue scale (PFS) Arabic version was used to measure participants' level of fatigue, the scale measures four dimensions of subjective fatigue: behavioral, affective, sensory, and cognitive. Patients above 18 years old, received chemotherapy and do BMT between Oct 2016 and Oct 2017, were included in this study. Results: 100 patient participated in this study, 52% (N: 52) diagnosed with leukemia, 32% (N: 32) lymphoma, and 16% (N: 16) hematology. Thirty-nine patients (39%) had no or mild fatigue level, they do not need medical intervention, 47% (N: 47) and 14% (N: 14) classified as moderate and sever level of fatigue respectively, equal to 61% of the total sample who need medical intervention. Overall fatigue severity categories; mild, moderate, and sever shows that there is significant difference in term of severity subscale in sensory and behavioral dimensions ( P = 0.03, 0.004) respectively, and the other subscale dimension did not significantly differ among patient ( P > 0.05), the highest mean subscale score occurred in the behavioral dimension (M = 4.8, SD = 2.37), while the lowest mean subscale score occurred in cognitive dimension, (M=2.59, SD=2.35). The overall score mean of the male patients regarding the fatigue severity was 45.18 (n=74), and for the female patients the mean was 57.03 (n=26), and the result shows that there was significant difference in the overall mean scores between male patients and female patients (t (98)= −2.2, P < 0.05). Conclusion: Fatigue-related to BMT is a serious and prevalent problem among patients with cancer. Fatigue may impair quality of life among this group of patients; further study may be conducted to assess the effect of fatigue on quality of life and activity of daily living. It is essential to include fatigue assessment as a priority for the BMT patients.