Quality of Life, Psychological Distress, and Prognostic Awareness Among Caregivers of Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-Cell Therapy Recipients

Caregivers of patients treated with chimeric antigen receptor-T (CAR-T) cell therapy play a critical role helping with the patient care. Nevertheless, their experience during this intense therapy remains largely unaddressed. Thus, we aimed to longitudinally describe quality of life (QoL) and psychol...

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Published in:Transplantation and cellular therapy 2024-02, Vol.30 (2), p.S338-S339
Main Authors: Barata, Anna, Dhawale, Tejaswini, Newcomb, Richard Andrew, Amonoo, Hermioni Lokko, Nelson, Ashley M., Yang, Daniel, Karpinski, Kyle, Holmbeck, Katherine, Farnam, Emelia Jean, Frigault, Matthew J., Johnson, Patrick Connor, El-Jawahri, Areej R.
Format: Article
Language:English
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Summary:Caregivers of patients treated with chimeric antigen receptor-T (CAR-T) cell therapy play a critical role helping with the patient care. Nevertheless, their experience during this intense therapy remains largely unaddressed. Thus, we aimed to longitudinally describe quality of life (QoL) and psychological distress (anxiety, depression), as well as prognostic awareness among caregivers and explore its association with baseline distress. We conducted a longitudinal study of caregivers of patients undergoing CAR-T therapy and examined QoL (CAReGiverOncology Quality Of Life questionnaire), and psychological distress (Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale) prior to CAR-T (baseline) and at days 7, 30, 90 and 180 post-infusion. At baseline, caregivers also completed the Prognostic Awareness Impact Scale, which examines cognitive understanding of prognosis, emotional coping with prognosis and adaptive response (i.e., capacity to use prognostic awareness to inform life decisions). We enrolled 58% (69/120) of eligible caregivers. Caregivers reported QoL impairments and univariate mixed-effects models revealed that QoL did not change over time (longitudinal model B=0.09, 95% Confidence Interval [CI]: -0.14 -0.32, p=0.452). The rate of clinically significant depression and anxiety symptoms was 47.7% and 20.0% at baseline, and 39.1% and 17.4% at 180 days. A total of 32% (20/63) of caregivers reported that their oncologist said the cancer is curable. In linear regression models, greater emotional coping with prognosis was associated with lower symptoms of anxiety (B=-0.17, 95% CI=-0.24 - -0.11, p
ISSN:2666-6367
2666-6367
DOI:10.1016/j.jtct.2023.12.469