Trends in Late Mortality and Life Expectancy after Autologous Blood or Marrow Transplantation (BMT) Performed over Three Decades - a BMT Survivor Study (BMTSS) Report

Background: Advances in therapeutic and supportive care strategies have led to increasing use of autologous BMT to ensure durable disease-free survival in patients with hematologic malignancies. However, autologous BMT recipients carry a high burden of morbidity. The cumulative effect of autologous BMT and the long-term morbidity on life expectancy remains unknown. Further, the impact of changes in transplant practice (older age at BMT, increasing proportion of patients undergoing autologous BMT for plasma cell dyscrasias [PCD], increasing use of peripheral blood stem cells [PBSCs] and decreasing use of total body irradiation [TBI]) on late mortality and life expectancy remains unknown. We determined trends in life expectancy and cause-specific late mortality after autologous BMT performed over a 33y period (1981-2014) using the resources offered by BMTSS - a multi-institutional collaborative designed to examine late morbidity and mortality after BMT.