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Exploring Illness Uncertainty and Treatment-Specific Optimism Among Individuals with Refractory and Relapsed Hairy Cell Leukemia.
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Hairy Cell Leukemia (HCL) is a rare form of leukemia that invades the spleen and bone marrow causing several pancytopenia. Little is known about the HCL patients' perception on illness uncertainty and treatment-specific optimism. Purpose: This study aims to explore correlations between uncertainty in illness and treatment-optimism and to present the descriptive summary of numerical and categorical data analysis in patients with relapsed and refractory HCL. Methods: Mishel's uncertainty in illness-community form (MUIS-C) and Cohen's treatment-optimism (CTO) questionnaires were used through a mail survey method. A total of 31 participants completed the questionnaires from a phase II study at the National Cancer Institute, NIH. Data were analyzed using a descriptive summary statistics and Pearson correlations. Results: Both MUIS-C (=0.85 and CTO (=0.84)were tested for reliability with Cronbach's coefficient . The total score for MUIS-C showed a moderately negative correlation with the total score for CTO (Pearson’s r=0.61, p=0.000). Conclusions: The negative Pearson’s r-value indicated an inverse relationship between MUIS-C and CTO. This finding is consistent with other cancer related uncertainty-optimism studies where patients with higher disease uncertainty exhibit lower levels of optimism. Future work should focus on a larger sample and factor analyses to examine variability among observed variables with focus on identifying specific factors that affect uncertainty and optimism.
