Primary vs Secondary Myelofibrosis | What’s the Difference?
Primary vs Secondary Myelofibrosis | What’s the Difference? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.
How are primary myelofibrosis and secondary myelofibrosis defined? Expert Dr. Gabriela Hobbs explains the differences between the conditions and discusses a common scenario that secondary myelofibrosis patients often experience.
Dr. Gabriela Hobbs is a hematology-oncology physician specializing in the care of patients with myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPN), chronic myeloid leukemia and leukemia. Dr. Hobbs serves as clinical director of the adult leukemia service at Massachusetts General Hospital. Learn more about Dr. Gaby Hobbs.
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Transcript:
Katherine:
There may be some confusion, Dr. Hobbs, among people wondering what is the difference between primary and secondary myelofibrosis? Could you describe the differences?
Dr. Hobbs:
Sure. Great question. So, that term, primary and secondary, is actually used in medicine very frequently for the description of many conditions that are not that different. So, primary means a patient has myelofibrosis and did not have any myeloproliferative neoplasm, or MPN, before their diagnosis.
So, they went to the doctor and the first diagnosis they received was a diagnosis of myelofibrosis. Now sometimes we suspect that a patient may have had another MPN previously, such as essential thrombocythemia or polycythemia vera, but they just weren’t diagnosed.
What I mean by that is, you know, let’s say you meet a patient and you look through their chart and you see that five years ago or 10 years ago, they had really, really high platelets or very high red blood cell numbers. So, there you could say, well, you know, you were never diagnosed with ET or PV, but maybe you had that.
So, you probably have secondary myelofibrosis, but the diagnosis, you know, that you come with to the doctor is myelofibrosis. So, secondary myelofibrosis means that you had an underlying condition before, meaning you were first diagnosed with one condition like PV, polycythemia vera, or ET, and then those conditions turned into myelofibrosis.
And then we call that secondary myelofibrosis, meaning it is secondary to the primary condition, meaning ET or PV. One area of confusion that I’d like to be able to clarify also related to this is if a person has secondary myelofibrosis, they don’t have two myeloproliferative neoplasms or two conditions. It is one and the same. They just live on a spectrum and over time, they can turn into, one into the other. So, it’s not that you now have two diagnoses, it’s still the same condition, it’s just morphed a little.
