Materials and Methods
Our hospital is a tertiary university hospital that performs the isolation of BMT patients before and after their transplantation and their treatment during this isolation. Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (STROBE) guidelines were followed for this original observational retrospective study designed based on data collected from our hospital records. BMT was applied to 451 patients between March 2014 and October 2018 in our hospital’s adult hematology clinic. Our ORL clinic received 30 consultations from these BMT patients at that time. All these patients had BMT for different diagnosis. Depending on their diagnosis and stem cell sources, some patients had TBR prior to BMT, while others received chemotherapy for bone marrow suppression. After BMT, all patients had different lengths for immunosuppressive therapy to prevent rejection and complications. All patients were isolated in the hospital and followed closely until their immune system reached a certain level and the side effects caused by the treatment were controlled. ORL problems and their treatment processes, which are the subject of our study, include this isolation process. Patients’ applications that developed after discharge and made outpatient were not included in the study. If the patient was re-hospitalized for a condition that developed in the future and a new BMT was not performed, the consultations performed for these patients were also excluded from the study. Ethical institution name is blinded for review.
Statistical analyses
Differences were evaluated using ANOVA and chi-square tests as appropriate. A chi-square test was used to test the similarity of gender distribution. The differences between the age of the patients, the duration of the ORL consultation between transplant and ORL examination were evaluated using the One-way ANOVA F test, considering gender characteristics. Data were analyzed using SPSS Statistics version 22.0 (IBM, New York, USA) and Microsoft Excel® 2010 software. Statistical significance was accepted as p <0.05.