A. A. Novik, T. I. Ionova, S. A. Kalyadina, T. P. Nikitina, D. A. Fedorenko, N. E. Mochkin, K. A. Kurbatova

Development and characteristics of a new instrument for symptom assessment in patients undergoing bone marrow / hematopoietic stem cell transplantation

The article aimed to describe development of a new symptom assessment tool - Comprehensive Symptom Profile in Patients Undergoing BMT/PSCT (CSP-BMT) and testing its applicability in this patient population. CSP-BMT is developed to assess the severity of 46 symptoms specific for patients undergoing BMT/PSCT.
It consists of numerical rating scales, scored from 0 (no symptom) to 10 (most expressed symptom). Applicability of CSP-BMT with preliminary analysis of psychometric properties was tested in the pilot study which included 94 patients with hematological malignancies and autoimmune diseases who underwent autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation.
The utility of CSP-BMT was shown: all the items were easy to read and understand by the patients; the data of the tool were clear for interpretation by physicians and were used by them in clinical decision making. Reliability, construct validity and sensitivity to changes in symptom status were demonstrated.
Thus, CSP-BMT is an appropriate and practical tool to assess symptom severity in patients during and after BMT/PSCT. The utility of the questionnaire was shown; preliminary psychometric properties appeared to be satisfactory. Further studies are needed before the use of CSP-BMT in clinical practice and clinical trials.