Role of Health Behaviors in Sexual Quality of Life Among Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplant Survivors

Hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT) recipients are a population increasingly characterized by survivorship. A psychosocial outcome integral to overall quality of life and optimal survivorship outcomes is sexual quality of life (SQOL). In this arena, HSCT patients' prognostics are markedly grim. Though examinations of variables that affect overall survivorship in HSCT patients are relatively novel, SQOL outcomes have still received a disproportionately minimal amount of focus both in research and practice. Because health behaviors and their correlates are implicated in SQOL outcomes in the general population as well as survivorship and overall QOL outcomes in HSCT patients, inquiring about the relationship(s) between health behaviors and SQOL outcomes in HSCT patients is a logical next step in attempting to establish the etiologies of poor SQOL outcomes in order to ultimately improve HSCT survivors' outcomes longitudinally. The present study examines how health behaviors (exercise, diet, alcohol, and tobacco use) affect sexual interest and satisfaction in HSCT patients, and how correlates of health behaviors as well as adjunctive variables might contribute to those relationships. From these results, implications for research and practice are discussed, and utilized to make recommendations for future research and practice changes.