Multisite Randomized Trial of Inpatient Palliative Care Intervention for Patients Undergoing Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation

Patients undergoing hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) and their caregivers endure immense physical and psychological symptoms, which result in quality-of-life (QOL) impairments during HSCT. We conducted a multisite randomized trial among adults undergoing autologous or allogeneic HSCT at three academic institutions. Patients were randomly assigned to an inpatient palliative care (PC) intervention or usual care. Intervention patients met with PC clinicians twice weekly during the HSCT hospitalization. Patients assigned to usual care could be referred to PC as per standard of care. We assessed QOL (patient: Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-Bone Marrow Transplant; caregiver: Caregiver-Oncology-QOL), depression and anxiety symptoms (Hospital-Anxiety-and-Depression-Scale), and patients' post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms (PTSD Checklist) at baseline, week 2, and 3 and 6 months post-HSCT. The primary end point was patients' QOL at week 2 during hospitalization when patients experience their QOL nadir. We used linear regression, adjusting for baseline scores, to evaluate the effect of the intervention on patient-reported outcomes at week 2. We used linear mixed-effect models to assess the effect of the intervention on study outcomes longitudinally. We enrolled 68.7% (360/524) of eligible patients between October 2018 and July 2022. Compared with those receiving usual care, patients receiving the intervention reported better QOL (adjusted mean difference [B], 6.3; SE, 0.1; P < .001), lower depression (B, -1; SE, 0.4; P = .026), and fewer PTSD symptoms (B, -1.9; SE, 0.9; P = .046) at week 2. Patient-reported anxiety did not differ significantly between groups at week 2. In longitudinal analyses, patients receiving the intervention reported a steeper decline in PTSD symptoms over 6 months post-HSCT (slope difference, -0.9; SE, 0.7; P = .012). All other patient-reported outcomes did not differ longitudinally between the groups. PC led to substantial improvements in patients' QOL, depression, and PTSD symptoms with sustained effects on PTSD symptoms up to 6 months post-HSCT.