Patient Reported Symptoms, Functioning, and Quality of Life (QoL) in Patients Treated With Chimeric Antigen Receptor T Cells for Hematologic Malignancy: A Systematic Review and Meta Analysis

OBJECTIVES: Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells are a revolutionary breakthrough therapy for the treatment of hematological malignancies. Patient-reported outcomes (PRO) have become drastically vital in differentiating the therapeutic options and have also become a vital tool for measuring the quality of life in patients. Being a novel treatment, CAR-T cell therapy lacks enough patient-reported experience exploration. The aim of our study was to conducted a systematic literature review to explore the PRO experience in patients receiving CAR-T cell therapy for hematologic malignancies.

METHODS: The literature search was conducted in PUBMED (Medline) and Google Scholar to identify the original studies that reported PRO experience of CAR-T cell. Two independent reviewers were involved in all the steps of the review.

RESULTS: A total of 30 studies were included in this review. EORTC QLQ-C30 is the most assessed tool, followed by EQ-5D-5L and FACT. The post-CAR-t cell therapy EORTC QLQ-C30 global health assessment values were reported in five studies, including studies for a total of 170 patients, and therapy significantly (p = 0.03) improved the score. Similarly, EORTC QLQ-C30 emotional well being and FACT-G assessment scales post-CAR-t therapy significance were (p = 0.04) and (p = 0.00001) compared to baseline, respectively.

CONCLUSIONS: This review provided insight into patient-reported outcomes after CAR-t cell therapy. Being the most used tool among the included studies, the EORTC QLQ-C30 post-treatment result shows significant improvement after the therapy, aligning with the other tools as well. Healthcare researchers can utilize the review to examine and better understand the PRO measure in hematological cancer patients under CAR-t cell therapy.