Burden and Needs of Patients with Severe GvHD from the Supportive and Palliative Care Perspective—A Literature Review

SIMPLE SUMMARY: Patients who have been treated with an allogeneic, hematopoietic stem cell transplantation can develop severe graft-versus-host disease. This complication may place patients in a life-threatening situation, in which a curative goal of care can no longer be achieved and needs to be changed into a palliative one. In our clinical experience, this patient group is very heterogenous, with a high disease burden and special needs that are often overlooked. In this review, we summarize the current literature on the needs and burdens of patients with severe forms of graft-versus-host disease from a supportive and palliative care perspective to draw a comprehensive picture of this patient group. Despite a fundamental lack of studies, the findings suggest that the more severe the GvHD, the worse the quality of life and physical functioning. The relative void of data highlights the need for research on this special issue in order to optimize the treatment and care of patients with severe graft-versus-host disease. ABSTRACT: Graft-versus-host disease (GvHD) is a frequent, and often life-threatening, complication after an allogeneic, hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (allo-SCT). It can appear in an acute or a chronic form and presents different grades of severity. Particularly, the severe forms of GvHD are often responsible for a change of the curative intent for allo-SCT into a palliative goal of care. For this non-systematic review, we conducted a focused literature search in the MEDLINE database via PubMed to examine whether patients with severe forms of GvHD might have special needs and burdens from a supportive and palliative care perspective. To draw a comprehensive picture of this patient group, we included findings on quality of life (QoL) and physical symptoms and function as well as psychological and spiritual well-being. In most domains, patients with severe forms of GvHD showed greater impairment and a higher symptom burden compared to patients with milder forms of GvHD. However, we could not identify any studies that specifically investigated patients with severe forms of GvHD. Further research in this field is necessary to guarantee the highest standard of care for this very special patient group.