What AML Patients Should Know About the COVID-19 Vaccines
What AML Patients Should Know About the COVID-19 Vaccines from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.
What are some key points for acute myeloid leukemia (AML) patients to understand about the COVID-19 vaccines? Dr. David Sallman shares advice for patients who are considering the COVID-19 vaccine.
Dr. David Sallman is an Assistant Member in the Department of Malignant Hematology at Moffitt Cancer Center where he specializes in myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS), acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPN). Learn more about Dr. Sallman, here.
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Transcript:
Katherine:
Are the COVID-19 vaccines safe for AML patients, and how does the vaccine affect treatment, if at all?
Dr. Sallman:
Yeah, I think that’s a great question. I think it’s really a rapidly evolving day-by-day update. For example, at our center, we vaccinated a high number of patients and we’re actually in a study trying to understand what their antibody production. So, I think the question is less ‘is it safe or not safe,’ but more is it as effective or worthwhile based on patients that have low blood counts.
I think, in general, if a patient is in remission, either post-therapy or on maintenance-type therapy that has a relatively preserved white count and is it’s very reasonable to utilize it, I think we still have the caveat of is it as effective, of course we don’t know that clearly since all the large trials, these patients weren’t really included. But in general, if you’re not severely leukopenic, we are vaccinating a high percentage of patients that we’re monitoring closely, but anecdotally, we’ve not had significant different adverse events from our perspective.
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