Symptom Clusters in Hong Kong Chinese Children With Blood Cancer

Symptom Clusters in Hong Kong Chinese Children With Blood Cancer:: A Longitudinal Study

Pediatric blood cancer is the most common childhood malignancy. Despite its survival has been substantially improved, children still have to pay a high price for numerous distressing symptoms resulted from chemotherapy. Previous studies related to symptom experiences mainly focus on individual symptoms, rather than on multiple symptoms. Understanding these distressing symptoms may help healthcare professionals to develop appropriate and effective interventions with the aims of alleviating symptom severity and thus promoting the child's psychosocial well-being and quality of life.

A longitudinal study design will be conducted. A sample of 120 patients age 5-17years, diagnosed with blood cancer but not yet receive any chemotherapy and able to communicate with Cantonese and read Chinese will be recruited in the pediatric oncology ward of Hong Kong Children's Hospital.

Inclusion Criteria:

• aged 5 - 17 years old
• diagnosed with blood cancer but not yet receive any chemotherapy
• able to communicate with Cantonese and read Chinese

Exclusion Criteria:

• who are scheduled to have concurrent cancer treatment
• with recurrent malignancy
• medical condition, or cognitive and learning problems in their medical records