Essential Thrombocythemia Watch & Wait | What Patients Should Know

Essential Thrombocythemia Watch & Wait | What Patients Should Know from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

What is watch and wait, and what does it mean for essential thrombocythemia (ET) patients? Dr. Naveen Pemmaraju defines this term, helps viewers to understand why it’s beneficial to wait before beginning treatment, and shares advice for managing the worry that can be associated with this time period.

Dr. Naveen Pemmaraju is Director of the Blastic Plasmacytoid Dendritic Cell Neoplasm (BPDCN) Program in the Department of Leukemia at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Learn more about Dr. Pemmaraju

 

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Transcript:

Katherine Banwell:

Stephanie writes, “I have ET, and I’m not being treated. Do you have advice for the watch-and-wait period? I’m anxious about the disease changing and don’t know what I’m waiting for.” So, before you answer the question, Dr. Pemmaraju, would you define this term, watch and wait?  

Dr. Pemmaraju:

I will. And to Stephanie and everyone out there, this is a great question. I will say half the folks I talk to actually call it watch and worry, okay. Some people call it watch and wait, and as Stephanie’s saying, some people call it watch and worry.  

Yeah, the concept is threefold. One is that there are many cancers, many cancers, including blood cancers, that can be caught so early on that they don’t require treatment. A lot of patients with CLL, chronic lymphocytic leukemia, ET, as Stephanie mentioned, in the solid tumor. It’s very common to be diagnosed with a prostate cancer that’s low grade, early stage that can be observed. Number two is in ET, there is a science behind it.   

What we found in our studies, and they can be updated over time and you’ll see those, the traditional is that if you’re below the age of 60 and/or you’ve had no blood clot, thrombotic event, that’s considered low risk. And the treatment can be observation, perhaps adding in a baby aspirin to prevent against blood clots if there’s no contraindication. Now what’s magic about that age 60, obviously as you know, it’s not magic. It’s more of a statistical, continuous variable algorithm that says around that time, the risk of blood clots goes up.

And so then you’d consider cytoreductive therapy at that point. Now there’s exceptions to that. Many of our young patients are on therapy, but there’s usually some reason for that. Some high-risk feature, wildly uncontrolled blood counts, for example, symptom burden, some other high-risk features. So, it’s a suggestion. It’s a guideline, not an absolute. And then the third part of it is, the what do you do in that time? And that’s the frustrating thing. And I think that’s what Stephanie’s getting to.  

Again, that’s why I said the watch and worry versus watch and wait. Some of it is, how are you feeling outside of this? Some patients take it as a great news. Hey, you have this blood cancer, that’s not good news. But the good news is it’s probably not going to be active for a long time, we can, “just watch it.” But some people, as Stephanie is saying, take it the opposite way. What do you mean I got a blood cancer? I got something lurking in my body. You’re telling me it’s there, you know it’s there. And so what’s up with that? And the concept there is that some of these situations like low-risk ET, we found that if you treat too early, too aggressively, you can actually do harm.  

So, that’s the key. These chemo drugs are not benign as you had me discuss earlier. They have toxicity, side effects, short-term, long-term. So, it’s a risk-benefit thing. If the risk far outweighs the benefit, as in the younger patient with no symptoms, no high-risk features, observation is okay. But at some point, when it turns, that’s the threshold.  

So, really the key is, if we believe these are stem cell blood cancer disorders, we need to be thinking about and designing therapies with minimal to no toxicity. Something that actually modifies the disease early on and something that leads to long-term outcomes. And we don’t have that yet in ET. We’re working on that in PV and myelofibrosis. So, stay tuned for that.

And then finally, let me also add, this is an important point, not everybody gets it. This watch and wait versus watch and worry. So, I’m glad Stephanie brought that up because it’s not always good news, uniformly, when you tell someone, good news is you don’t have to do anything bad news, there’s something there. 

Thriving With an MPN | Advice for Setting Goals and Making Treatment Decisions

Thriving With an MPN | Advice for Setting Goals and Making Treatment Decisions from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

Dr. Raajit Rampal shares his perspective on what it means to thrive with an MPN. Dr. Rampal goes on to discuss the factors that impact therapy as well as advice for setting treatment goals for patients with essential thrombocythemia (ET), polycythemia vera (PV), and myelofibrosis (MF).

Dr. Raajit Rampal is a hematologist-oncologist specializing in the treatment of myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs) and leukemia at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. Learn more about Dr. Rampal.

 

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Transcript:

Katherine Banwell:

In your experience, what do you think it means to thrive with an MPN? 

Dr. Raajit Rampal:

It’s a great question, right. I think taking a step back, when we think about our patients with MPNs, one of the questions I always have for patients are what are your goals? And inevitably and invariably, people want two things. They want to live longer and they want to live better. And so, I think that thinking about thriving with an MPN to me is about how do we minimize the impact of an MPN in someone’s life. And that means a couple of things. One that means how do we deal with symptoms or things that are causing medical problems. 

But two, how do we deal with the anxiety of a diagnosis? In many cases in my experience, that can be just as detrimental to somebody’s well-being as the actual physical symptoms of the disease.  

Katherine Banwell:

When it comes to choosing therapy for polycythemia vera essential thrombocythemia, or myelofibrosis, it’s important to work with your healthcare team to identify what is going to work best for you. So, to begin, would you define shared decision-making and why is this critical to properly managing life with an MPN? 

Dr. Raajit Rampal:

Yeah. Shared decision-making, to me, is really about the physician or whoever is on the healthcare team providing the patient all of the information needed to make a good decision. That means what are we trying to do? What is the medication or invention going to accomplish? What are the side effects because there are always side effects.  

And what do we think that’s going to do or how is that going to impact the patient’s life? Where things get nuanced is that patients come to us because we have expertise. There are two extremes. One extreme is that the physician says this is the medication you should take. End of discussion. The other extreme though is also not helpful, which is to say to a patient here are five choices. Here are the side effects. You pick one. Our job is to lay out those side effects and the benefits but then, also help guide a decision.  

Katherine Banwell:

What are treatment goals, and how are they determined? 

Dr. Raajit Rampal:

It depends on the disease to a large extent. Now, when we’re dealing with ET and PV, the primary goal of our interventions is to reduce the risk of a clotting event or bleeding event. And that usually involves controlling the blood counts in some cases, not in all patients with ET. 

Sometimes aspirin is all we do. Myelofibrosis is a little bit more complicated because it depends on what the problem is. Not all myelofibrosis patients have the same challenges. Some have anemia that needs treatment. Some have a big spleen. Some have symptoms and some have nothing and they just need observation. So, it’s a bigger list with MF patients. But I think the first part of the discussion always is defining what the goal needs to be. 

Katherine Banwell:

What factors are considered when choosing therapy for ET, PV, and MF? 

Dr. Raajit Rampal:

I think a couple of things. One is what medication we think is going to benefit the patient best. That has to take into account the individual, their willingness to take certain medications, for example, pills versus interferon injection. Some people have an aversion to self-injection, which we have to take that into account. What are the other medical conditions that the patient is dealing with? 

And the reality is, in some cases, it’s cost because these medications, depending on a patient’s insurance, can have quite a different spread in terms of cost. Unfortunately, that is something we have to take into account.  

How to Access Financial Support for MPN Patients

How to Access Financial Support for MPN Patients  from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

Is there financial help for patients living with ET, PV, and myelofibrosis? MPN specialist Dr. Joseph Scandura shares advice and resources to ease the financial burden of care and treatment. 

Dr. Joseph Scandura is Associate Professor of Medicine and Scientific Director of the Silver MPN Center at Weill Cornell Medicine. Learn more about Dr. Scandura, here.

 

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Transcript:

Katherine:

We’d be remiss if we didn’t bring up financial concerns, treatment and regular appointments can really become quite expensive. Understanding that everyone’s situation is different, of course, where can patients turn if they need resources for financial support? 

Dr. Scandura:

Yeah. It depends on what the issue is. So, one of the biggest areas that I found this can interfere with care is when we have copays that are really not reasonable and not affordable. And so, how do we fix that? How do we get access to an agent that might be beneficial for a patient but that – you know, and the insurance has approved it, but they’ve approved it with such a high copay that it’s just not an option anymore.  

And so, there are foundations. The PAN Foundation, we often will reach out to for copay assistance. And, actually, many companies have copay assistance programs for their individual drugs. And so, we have some of our nurses who are quite good at navigating these different agencies, and some of them are kind of drug-specific.  

And because we see a lot of patients with MPNs and the number of drugs is not that great, we’re pretty tapped into what are the options for copay assistance that might be helpful. And it often works. It doesn’t always work. I had a patient I saw pretty routinely, and I kind of like my certain group of labs that kind of make me feel like I have a good sense of what’s going on. But he was getting killed with the lab costs. And he mentioned this to me, and then I have to do what I tell my – I have three teenage daughters, right? And, when they were littler – smaller, younger, we spent a lot of time distinguishing needs from wants, right?  

So, this was one of those instances. What laboratory do I need to make sure that this patient is safe? What do I want because it makes me feel like I have a better idea of what’s going on? And maybe I can back off on those wants if I’m seeing the patient pretty frequently, which I happen to be at that time. And so, some of that is a conversation.   

And it depends on the specifics of the insurance and a little bit of back and forth and knowing how to kind of minimize that financial burden when that’s starting to compromise care. 

Thriving With an MPN | Tips and Support for Navigating Care

Thriving With an MPN | Tips and Support for Navigating Care from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

Dr. Joseph Scandura, an MPN specialist, discusses the management and monitoring of essential thrombocythemia (ET), polycythemia vera (PV), and myelofibrosis (MF), and shares resources and support for managing day-to-day life with an MPN.

Dr. Joseph Scandura is Associate Professor of Medicine and Scientific Director of the Silver MPN Center at Weill Cornell Medicine. Learn more about Dr. Scandura, here.

 

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How Treatment Goals Impact MPN Treatment Decisions 


Transcript:

Katherine:

Hello, and welcome. I’m Katherine Banwell, your host for today’s webinar. This program is part of our Thrive series. And, today, we’re going to discuss navigating life with an MPN. Before we get into the discussion, please remember that this program is not a substitute for seeking medical advice. 

Please, refer to your healthcare team about what might be best for you. Well, let’s meet our guest today. Joining me is Dr. Joseph Scandura. Welcome, Dr. Scandura, would you please introduce yourself?

Dr. Scandura:

Hi. I’m Joe Scandura. I am Associate Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell in New York City. I am a Physician Scientist. I actually run a lab studying MPNs and hematopoietic stem cells. And I am Scientific Director of the Silver MPN Center at Cornell.

Katherine:

Thank you so much for taking time out of your schedule to join us today. We start all of the webinars in our Thrive series with the same question. In your experience, what do you think it means to thrive with an MPN?

Dr. Scandura:

As a goal, I think it’s very simple, symptom-free and normal life expectancy. Thriving with an MPN is living your life as though you didn’t have an MPN.

Katherine:

And one part of thriving with an MPN is finding a treatment approach that manages your disease, the symptoms of your MPN, and that fits with your lifestyle. So, what are the factors that are considered when choosing treatment for patients with ET, PV, and MF?

Dr. Scandura:

Certainly, the goals of the therapy. So, is the therapy one that I would be looking to maybe delay progression or for long-term potential benefits, or is it something I need now to control short-term risks such as blood clots? The goals of the patient because some therapies may be more suitable to the goals of one patient than another. 

And the other – you know, there’s clinical features that may kinda push towards one approach versus another. Certainly, in a 20-year-old patient, I’m thinking about fertility. I’m thinking about a normal life expectancy. In a 90-year-old patient, I have a different set of concerns, multiple medications – what am I going to do that might be affecting their other comorbid conditions?

Katherine:

Right. Right.

Dr. Scandura:

I think about what are my near-term and long-term goals. So, obviously, age becomes a factor there. If I’m 95 years old, no matter what I do that person is not going to live 20 years. If that person’s 20 years old and they’re not living 30, 40, 50, 60 years, that’s a real shame. That’s a huge loss of life. So, that helps kinda point me in one direction or another. 

And, then, there’s different types of therapy. There are injectable agents. There are pills. There are drugs that have been used for a long time but don’t really have an FDA approval. There are drugs that are approved for certain indications. 

And, as physicians, we can sometimes stretch that based upon clinical judgment. So, I think a lot of that goes into the discussion I have with patients about therapy.

And that’s always – you know, I present to them what the options are, what I think the benefits might be, what the potential toxicities are, and then we discuss.

Katherine:

Right. I would imagine monitoring patients is different for each of the MPNs. So, how are patients typically monitored over time, and let’s start with essential thrombocythemia? 

Dr. Scandura:

Yeah. I think – again, it’s similar. You know, what’s near-term, what’s long-term? And so, in all of these diseases, thrombosis risk is a near-term risk. That’s something that I am monitoring in certain ways to help mitigate that risk. In ET and PV, I approach them similarly. Blood counts are certainly – these are diseases of the blood forming system. Certainly, monitoring blood counts I find helpful. But the reality of it is, in ET, there is not a clear linkage between blood counts and risks. 

And so, I like to keep the platelet count near normal if I can. But I also recognize that it may not be worth suppressing all of the blood counts to achieve that landmark, because it’s not clear that that’s really reducing the risk any more than just having somebody on a medication that helps control the blood counts. In polycythemia vera, different blood counts are very important. The red blood cells are kind of like part of the clotting risk. We know from clinical trials that keeping the red blood cell parameters within certain ranges reduces the risk of clotting. And so, what I monitor in polycythemia vera is the hematocrit. In women, I like to keep it below 42. In men, I like to keep it below 45. 

But I don’t just – I’m not a slave to the hematocrit. I am keeping an eye on the other blood counts and the other red blood cell parameters. So, for instance, what’s the size of the red blood cells? That tells me a little bit about what’s going on in the blood formation for that patient. And what’s the number of red blood cells? So, sometimes people can have very small red cells, because they’re a little iron-deficient and have a huge surplus of the number of red blood cells. And that tells me a little bit about how their blood forming system is responding to therapy. 

Iron deficiency in polycythemia vera is very prominent. I personally believe it’s a very major driver of symptoms in patients who are receiving phlebotomy as part of their care. And it’s something that I monitor and really counsel patients on. My goal is to make phlebotomy independent, but it can take a while. 

Everybody starts out iron-deficient, and then we take iron out of their body through blood with the phlebotomy. And that makes them more iron-deficient. 

Katherine:

Right.

Dr. Scandura:

I monitor symptoms from patients, and sometimes that can tell me that their disease needs to be – their treatment needs to be tweaked a little bit, even something as simple as aspirin. People can sometimes have burning in the skin or itching that is sometimes responsive to changing the aspirin dose or how it’s given, once a day versus twice a day. 

And that simple thing can be a big change for a patient who’s kind of, literally, climbing out of their skin or wishing they could and to try and find something that is helping.

I had a patient the other day. He had COVID. I said, “Oh, you should probably get this medication.” Do you have your primary care physician? Who’s taking care of you?” And he goes, “Well, to be honest with you, you’re my guy.” And so, it’s true. I see this patient a lot. And so, sometimes they forget. If I’m not paying attention to their blood pressure, the risks or treatment of diabetes, cholesterol, lipids, their screening programs for mammogram or colonoscopy, health maintenance issues, I do keep an eye on that in patients, because I do think it’s a part of the MPNs. 

I think that there are excess risks for patients for some of these factors. Certainly, if you think of it as three strikes, they get a strike for having an MPN. I don’t want them to have any other strikes. So, diabetes, hypertension, those are strikes that I can potentially, at least, treat or refer them to somebody to help comanage with me. And so, that’s kind of my general approach.

Katherine:

What about patients who have myelofibrosis? Are they monitored more closely?

Dr. Scandura:

Yeah, I think it depends a little bit on the patient. Patients with early myelofibrosis often don’t have any symptoms or near-term risks much different than those from ET or PV. As the disease can progress, then some of these patients have more profound problems with symptoms, which I may be trying to find a solution to make them feel better. And also, blood counts can become more of an issue. 

Transfusions in some patients who are very high white blood cell count, the spleen is often quite enlarged. Although, in my experience, most patients aren’t really bothered by the size of their spleen as the physicians are. But it is something where I think, on average, they’re monitored a little bit more closely to quite a bit more closely depending on the patient.

Katherine:

Yeah. You mentioned blood counts. And we know that lab results can fluctuate a bit. What happens if someone suddenly has a change in blood counts? What do you do?

Dr. Scandura:

Yeah. I mean, repeat it. That’s the first thing. Also, check what’s going on. It’s not uncommon in patients with MPNs that I’ll see them and the counts are a little bit out of whack, the white count is much higher than it’s been, and questioning them. “Oh, yeah. I had X, Y, or Z last week or the week before.” It used to be a upper respiratory tract infection, or they had a minor surgical procedure. 

And sometimes the responses to these things can be accentuated in patients with MPNs. And so, if that’s what of this story, I certainly would repeat it and let things calm down a little. And that’s often all it is. I’m much more of a monitor of the trends. So, one-time measure doesn’t generally excite me. It might make me want to have a follow-up a little more – in a shorter period of time. Of course, it depends on what the change is. But, for most of the changes that we observe, they’re relatively minor. And I will monitor them over time. 

If I see a trend where something is progressively increasing or decreasing over time, then I start thinking about what else is going on. And that’s always in the context of what’s going on with the patient. How are they feeling? What’s their physical exam like? What are the other laboratory values like? 

Katherine:

When is a bone marrow biopsy necessary?

Dr. Scandura:

I would say a bone marrow biopsy is absolutely necessary at the time of diagnosis. I personally do not routinely monitor by bone marrow biopsy unless it’s part of a clinical trial. 

But I do perform a bone marrow or want to look at the bone marrow morphology if there is one of these changes or at least a trend that I want a little bit more information about. And so, if – or if it’s been a very long time since somebody has had a bone marrow. If it’s been five or ten years, then sometimes I may recommend we look just so we can collect a little bit more up-to-date information. 

But I don’t routinely do a bone marrow, but I will do it if there are laboratories that are kind of trending in the wrong direction, there’s symptoms, there’s physical findings that I’m just not sure about. And I think it would help me be more sure as to what’s going on and be able to discuss that with the patient. Sometimes, just to say, “Hey. Look, we were worried about this, but the bone marrow looks really good.” 

Katherine:

Yeah. Can you talk about shared decision-making? Why is it so important for patients to work closely with their healthcare team on choosing a therapy?

Dr. Scandura:

Because these are therapies that last for a long time. And, hopefully, the patients and the relationship last for a long time. And so, I think that everybody has to be comfortable with the decision about a therapy. And my personal goal is to try to make sure that everybody understands the rationale for a therapy, the potential ups and downs with the therapy, which every drug has, every approach has, and what I’m kind of watching and monitoring. I’m a very – I think that communication relieves a lot of anxiety. I think that the unknown is far scarier than the known, even if it’s not perfect. And so, I think shared decision-making has a role in relieving some of the scariness of unknown. 

If we’re discussing to come to a decision, that means that my job is to give you the knowledge that I have so that you can tell me the knowledge about you and what you’re feeling and what you want back. And that back and forth is what helps me do a better job of taking care of the patient and helps the patient understand what’s going on and relieve some of the stress of the unknown. So, I think it’s a very synergistic approach. I don’t think I could practice medicine in another way.

Katherine:

Dr. Scandura, much of our MPN community is highly engaged in their care. What are some educational resources you would recommend for people who are seeking more information about their condition?

Dr. Scandura:

I think that there’s some basic information available from a variety of – for instance, the National Cancer Institute has some basic information. Leukemia & Lymphoma Society has some basic information. 

The MPN Research Foundation has some basic information. And then there are some information websites that are run by corporations, which are – I think they try to be even-handed in some of the discussion and has some good information there, too. I think the – none of these is a perfect source of information. I don’t think there is one source that you can go to answer every question that you could ask. 

My MPN Center has a website with a bunch of QAs, and we just every now and then add a new one. And it’s just a really long list. So, these are questions our patients frequently ask us, and we sort of put answers there to help guide. But individual details are often more important than sort of generalizations. I find patient – go ahead.

Katherine:

Oh. I was just going to ask, what about the forums, patient forums that are available? Is that something you would recommend? 

Dr. Scandura:

What I kind of I find my patients do is they’ll go out and look for information, because patients with MPNs, thankfully, tend to live a long time. And they are often curious about their disease and want to do better and figure out how they can do better. And so, a lot of them will go to whatever sources are available. But, generally, they come back. So, we circle back; we regroup. And sometimes, it’s la-la land, a little bit crazy things, and sometimes it’s really interesting. 

I learn a lot, you know, what’s going on in terms of what are patients really reporting, because sometimes in a clinic visit people kind of don’t say everything, or they forget to say something or maybe just my experience. I don’t see every patient in the world, right? So, if it’s something that’s relatively rare, then I may not have seen it with a new drug or something like that. 

So, I can learn from that experience as well. So, I think it’s kind of like people go out. They can be like little honeybees and collect all the information from all the flowers out there. And then they come back, and we regroup in the nest. And we discuss and decide what makes sense, what’s relevant to them, and what might help with our decision-making.

Katherine:

Yeah. Managing the worry associated with a diagnosis or concerns even about progression can lead to a lot of anxiety and fear amongst patients. Why is it important for them to share what they’re feeling with their healthcare team?

Dr. Scandura:

I would say this. If our goals are to have people – I mean, this is what I say to patients – I want you to think about this disease when you’re here. And, then, when you’re not here, my goal is to have you not thinking about this disease because you’re feeling okay and you’re comfortable and confident in what’s going on. 

So, I want to make it a clinic visit disease. That’s not always possible. But, for many patients, it is. I don’t want somebody to become – to start thinking like a sick person when they’re not. I don’t want the diagnosis to be the disease, right? I want the person if they’re feeling well, to recognize that. Live your life; move on with things. But, at the same time, these kinds of diagnoses are scary. 

Katherine:

Yeah.

Dr. Scandura:

And so, it is normal with a new diagnosis or a change in the diagnosis to go through a period of time where you have to adjust. And so, that’s normal, and you have to work your way through it. Some people want to work that all out internally, and that’s good to a certain extent as long as they have good supports at home. But I often want to know how they’re doing, how they’re working through that so I can get a gauge of how it’s affecting their life and the duration where this adjustment is going on. 

So, somebody who’s still adjusting to a new diagnosis two years after the diagnosis, and they’re otherwise clinically well, that’s getting into the range where it’s not normal. You might need additional help. You might need counseling. And, in some patients, that might include some medications for a short period of time. The goal is to have the disease affecting you only in so far as it’s affecting you, not the idea of the disease.

Dr. Scandura:

So, that’s a – again, it’s a conversation. There are lots of resources. People, being individuals, deal with things in their own way, and I just try to help understand with them how it’s affecting their life. And, if it seems to be more than I would expect, I’ll tell them that. 

And then we can discuss that. It doesn’t mean we have to do something today, but I will tell them, “I think this is maybe a little bit more. Why are you so worried? I think you’re doing great.”

Katherine:

Yeah. Yeah. Can a social worker or somebody else on the healthcare team help with these emotional needs that patients have?

Dr. Scandura:

Absolutely. We have great social workers. I tap into them all the time. We also have a group of psychiatrists who are really interested in kind of psychiatry that’s related to oncology and the diagnoses and how it impacts care. I mean, this is New York City, so everybody has a therapist. But a lot of patients have preexisting connections to healthcare providers or support systems. I think, for some patients, groups are helpful.

Katherine:

We’d be remiss if we didn’t bring up financial concerns, treatment and regular appointments can really become quite expensive. Understanding that everyone’s situation is different, of course, where can patients turn if they need resources for financial support?

Dr. Scandura:

Yeah. It depends on what the issue is. So, one of the biggest areas that I found this can interfere with care is when we have copays that are really not reasonable and not affordable. And so, how do we fix that? How do we get access to an agent that might be beneficial for a patient but that – you know, and the insurance has approved it, but they’ve approved it with such a high copay that it’s just not an option anymore. 

And so, there are foundations. The PAN Foundation, we often will reach out to for copay assistance. And, actually, many companies have copay assistance programs for their individual drugs. And so, we have some of our nurses who are quite good at navigating these different agencies, and some of them are kind of drug-specific. 

And because we see a lot of patients with MPNs and the number of drugs is not that great, we’re pretty tapped into what are the options for copay assistance that might be helpful. And it often works. It doesn’t always work. I had a patient I saw pretty routinely, and I kind of like my certain group of labs that kind of make me feel like I have a good sense of what’s going on. But he was getting killed with the lab costs. And he mentioned this to me, and then I have to do what I tell my – I have three teenage daughters, right? And, when they were littler – smaller, younger, we spent a lot of time distinguishing needs from wants, right? 

So, this was one of those instances. What laboratory do I need to make sure that this patient is safe? What do I want because it makes me feel like I have a better idea of what’s going on? And maybe I can back off on those wants if I’m seeing the patient pretty frequently, which I happen to be at that time. And so, some of that is a conversation. 

And it depends on the specifics of the insurance and a little bit of back and forth and knowing how to kind of minimize that financial burden when that’s starting to compromise care.

Katherine:

Yeah. Let’s answer a few audience questions that we received in advance of the webinar. This one is from Sophie, “What complications can arise from an MPN during pregnancy?”

Dr. Scandura:

Well, look, pregnancy – here you have two things, one of them common and complicated and the other one uncommon and complicated. So, common is pregnancy, but every pregnancy is different. And there’s a lot of changes going on in the body, and there’s certain risks that can go along with that as well. So, clotting risks sometimes can be increased in pregnancy. And then you have an MPN, where you have a clotting risk on top of that. The pregnancy really changes what kinds of medications we can think about using. And so, there are certain medications that we use comfortably in patients that would be an absolutely forbidden medication in a pregnant woman. 

And so, it depends a little bit on what’s going on with the patient. But, if they have a history of clotting, then certainly, we would think about wanting to control the blood counts. It depends a little bit on what the disease is how we would do that. Interferons are commonly used in pregnancy, and they are safe in pregnancy and can improve the outcomes in some patients with pregnancy. 

But short of that, in patients, for instance, who are very thrombotic risk, sometimes we have to sort of balance the risk of having a clot and something that can interfere with the pregnancy and the risk of bleeding. So, it’s not uncommon that people are on blood thinners during pregnancy at some point, but it really depends on the individual patient. What we do here is we keep very close contact with the patients. 

And all of our patients are seen by the high-risk OB/GYN. So, it’s not the general obstetrics people who are monitoring the patient, so they’re much more closely monitored for complications of pregnancy. And we are seeing them more frequently during pregnancy to help, from the MPN side, to try to optimize and minimize the risks of clot. And that doesn’t end as soon as the baby’s out. If breastfeeding, their clotting risk is not normalized after pregnancy, as soon as the baby comes out. And so, you know, there’s an adjustment for several months afterwards where we’re still kind  of thinking about this person a little bit differently than we would if they were not or had not been recently pregnant. 

Katherine:

Yeah. We have another question. This one from Jennifer. She wonders, is there research being done on MPN progression to understand how it happens or even prevent or slow progression?

Dr. Scandura:

Yeah. There’s a lot. I think there is a – from both the sort of basic laboratory using animal models to try to understand what are the kind of systems that are involved in how these diseases change. What genes are involved? How do they talk to each other? You know, these are not cells that live in a vacuum, right? They live in a special microenvironment. What are the signals that crosstalk between the MPN cells, the MPN stem cells, and their microenvironment? 

And so, there’s a lot of research on that and the basic side of things. In humans, there’s a lot that has been done over the years in terms of trying to understand what are some of the genetic features of progression. And I think we’re beginning to get a little bit of a better understand of what are the non-genetic things that are associated with progression. 

I was part of an effort from the MPN Research Foundation and still am. They have what they call the Progression Network, where they tried to put together a number of investigators from really across the world to share ideas about the nature of progression and how we might look at studying this and understanding ways to prevent progression. 

I think we do have some drugs now that show some promise in terms of being able to prevent progression. I think interferons have shown this in polycythemia vera in terms of a promise for improved long-term outcomes and delayed risk progression. I think that the gold standard randomized trials are maturing and are sort of bearing out some of the same findings that have been observed retrospectively, so sort of kind of looking back in time. 

But the difficulty is that it can take a long time for patients to progress. And you say, “Oh, that’s great.” And that is great. But, from a research – from a statistical side, it means things are really slow. If you have to wait 15 years to assess whether or not people progressed less in one treatment versus another, it’s really slow going. And so, we have to do a compromise of what’s – you know, what do animal studies say? What does retrospective analysis, when we might have people who started treatment 30 years ago, and now we’re just seeing how did it all work out? It’s not a perfect study, because biases can creep in, but it’s what we have now. And so, there’s a lot. And I think, increasingly, progression is being recognized as a goal of therapy, to prevent progression. 

Personally, it is one of major goals, because I think we do a pretty good job at preventing clots with available treatments. But I don’t think we do a very good job at preventing progression, mostly, because we don’t exactly understand what’s driving that. And so, I think until we develop that deeper understanding and really invest the time and effort in terms of learning which approaches can help prevent progression, we’re going to continue to have these questions.

Katherine:

Yeah. Well, thank you for those answers, Dr. Scandura. And please continue to send in your questions to question@powerfulpatients.org, and we’ll work to get them answered on future programs. As we close out this conversation, Dr. Scandura, I would like to get your thoughts on where we stand with progress with MPN care. Are there advances in treatment research that you’re hopeful about?

Dr. Scandura:

Yeah. I think it’s a very exciting time, actually. I think that over the past 5 to 10 years the amount of new drugs that have been developed and tested in patients has grown exponentially. The number of companies that are targeting MPNs for their drug development has expanded dramatically. The number of clinical trials, good quality clinical trials has increased dramatically. And I think the success that’s coming out of that is we start seeing drugs now that are looking to be very, very effective. I don’t want to name individual drugs. 

But I know we have a number of clinical trials where we’re seeing things with these agents that we haven’t seen with our traditional therapies, meaning changes in the bone marrow that we haven’t seen before or a normalization of symptoms or blood counts in an area that has been challenging in the past. And so, we now have drugs and a number of drugs going for approval, a number of newly-approved drugs, even interferon, which is a drug that’s been around forever. Well, not forever. But, I mean, I guess forever, yeah, because it’s a natural product. 

So, as long as there have been humans, there have been interferons, even before humans. But now we have it. As a pharmaceutical, they’ve been around for decades. And we now have the first – even though we’ve been using it for decades, we have the first approved, FDA-approved interferon for polycythemia vera, which is I think a huge change. 

A company invested the money in getting FDA approval for an agent, and that means they have to – the bar’s higher, and they have to prove something that just using it off-label hasn’t. So, I think it’s a tremendously exciting time. I expect it’s going to continue. We’re going to continue to have improvements in care. There’s going to be combinations of drugs. I think that we’re going to see real advances over the next 5 to 10 years.

Katherine:

Well, Dr. Scandura, thank you so much for taking the time to join us today. 

Dr. Scandura:

It was a pleasure. It was nice meeting with you.

Katherine:

And thank you to all of our partners. To learn more about MPNs and to access tools to help you become a proactive patient, visit powerfulpatients.org. I’m Katherine Banwell. Thanks for being with us today. 

How Should You Participate in MPN Care and Treatment Decisions?

How Should You Participate in MPN Care and Treatment Decisions? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

Dr. Abdulraheem Yacoub, an MPN specialist, shares advice for patient self-advocacy and provides tips for participating in care and treatment decisions.

Dr. Abdulraheem Yacoub is a hematologist oncologist at the University of Kansas Cancer Center. Dr. Yacoub is an active researcher and is an Associate Professor of Hematologic Malignancies and Cellular Therapeutics. Learn more about Dr. Yacoub, here.
 

Related Programs:

 
How Treatment Goals Impact MPN Treatment Decisions

How Treatment Goals Impact MPN Treatment Decisions

Advice for Choosing MPN Therapy: What’s Right for You?

Advice for Choosing MPN Therapy: What’s Right for You?

Expert Perspective: Hopeful MPN Research and Development

Expert Perspective: Hopeful MPN Research and Development


Transcript:

Katherine:

Dr. Yacoub, what is the role of the patient in their care? When does shared decision-making come into play?  

Dr. Yacoub:

Absolutely. Patients are the drivers and the centerpiece of their health care. And patient self-advocacy is the most important tool. So, many of our patients are young, and they will live with their cancers a lot longer than many cancer doctors will practice oncology. And they will have many doctors. Statistically, each MPN patient will have multiple doctors throughout their career. And they will hear different derivatives. And the science will change. And they will be given different counseling over the time. And their disease will change.  

And they will have different needs as they go further. So, patients being involved in their well-being and their cancer care is important from the first day. And I always tell patients, “You need to start building your village from day one.” It is not just the patient, it’s your caregivers, it’s who else can help you.  

Who else can advise you? You might want to also invest in a friend or a spouse or a child, to come to you and listen to some of those discussions so that they can advise you later on, “Why are you making different decisions?” So, we encourage patients to be very involved early on, to build their own village, and to seek care. We routinely ask for second opinions. We want patients to always hear the story and hear the same story from another doctor so that they hear the range of how we word the truth and how we word the facts.  

And this way, they can have a better perspective. So, this is now a standard. Almost all patients should have two doctors, at least, the treating doctor and one doctor who’s an MPN specialist, who would give them another twist or another perspective to their health.  

So, and that is always important. And then there are very good references and online resources for patients to tackle in, such as this seminar and other good places where patients can seek more information. They also can go to a clinical trial to find out what are the ongoing clinical trials and advancements.   

There are structured patient symposiums nationally and regionally. So, and we strongly recommend that patients seek more opinions and more help and more resources and be very engaged with this disease, especially that it is a chronic cancer, and it’s not going to – 

Katherine:

It’s not going away. 

Dr. Yacoub:

It’s just a new lifestyle. And they need to be as engaged with it as they can.   

Advice for Choosing MPN Therapy: What’s Right for You?

Advice for Choosing MPN Therapy: What’s Right for You? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

MPN specialist Dr. Abdulraheem Yacoub reviews factors that determine which treatment is most appropriate for your essential thrombocythemia (ET), polycythemia vera (PV), or myelofibrosis (MF). 

Dr. Abdulraheem Yacoub is a hematologist oncologist at the University of Kansas Cancer Center. Dr. Yacoub is an active researcher and is an Associate Professor of Hematologic Malignancies and Cellular Therapeutics. Learn more about Dr. Yacoub, here.
 

Related Programs:

 
How Treatment Goals Impact MPN Treatment Decisions

How Treatment Goals Impact MPN Treatment Decisions

How Should You Participate in MPN Care and Treatment Decisions?

How Should You Participate in MPN Care and Treatment Decisions?

Expert Perspective: Hopeful MPN Research and Development

Expert Perspective: Hopeful MPN Research and Development


Transcript:

Katherine:

As with most conditions, all patients are different, of course, and what might work for one person might not be appropriate for another. So, how do you choose which treatment is right for a patient?   

Dr, Yacoub:

Excellent. So, and that’s actually the heart of what we define as the art of practicing medicine and being patient-centric and focused. And patients already have their own wishes and their needs. And everything should start with having a discussion with patients on what is their priority, and what are they trying to achieve.  

And we do have to explain to them the tools we have, the interventions that can help them. But we also need to make sure they’re compatible with what they actually want and their goals in life. And sometimes what we doctors want is not exactly what the patients want. So, we always have to remind ourselves that patients are the drivers of their care. And they have the absolute right to be informed and to make informed decisions based on the options we advise them about.  

So, that is always a centerpiece of healthcare. And then patients – basically, we defined four pillars of care. We want to control their symptoms, we want to prevent complications, we want to modify the disease so it doesn’t transform, and we want our therapies not to have toxicities, not to have side effects that are worse than the disease.  

So, we bring that up to the table. And we also look at the patient. What are their symptoms? What did the disease cause them to be complications?  

What is the risk that their cancer is actually going to progress quickly to hurt their lives? And how serious is the therapy we’re recommending? And we need to make sure that there is a good match between what we’re offering and what the disease is manifesting. So, for example, for patients who have a lot of symptoms, but they have low-risk cancer that they can live with for a long time, we focus on symptoms. We focus on treatments that improve their symptoms.  

While with patients who have more serious diseases that are eminently life-threatening, we focus on an expedited path to a more aggressive therapy and a bone marrow transplant.  

And then we also try to match those therapies with the other patient’s wishes and needs and so forth. So, all these factors are important. We have more tools to try to prognosticate. So, prognosticate is the medical word that we use as forecasting.  

We like to forecast the disease or the cancer. We try to predict the patient’s future. Fortunately, we actually have good tools to prognosticate now. We have models or calculators that factor in patients’ features, their symptoms, their age, their blood counts, their bone marrow findings, and their DNA mutations. And it gives us a score, a risk score that can correlate with their life expectancy or their outcomes.  

And we use those tools to guide us. So, there’s actually a tool we use to help patients reach that decision. It’s an objective tool to decide how serious is this disease and how seriously we should tackle it. It’s very applicable for patients with myelofibrosis, more sort of the other lower-risk cancers.  

Katherine:

What about comorbidities? How do they fit into the treatment plan?  

Dr. Yacoub:

Very important.  

So, again, it also goes back to finding the balance between how serious is the disease, how serious is the treatment, and how will the patient’s general health tolerate and factor in the choices patients make accordingly. So, myeloproliferative neoplasms do happen in a broad range of ages. And we have children, minors with MPNs, and we have elderly patients with MPNs. And it’s a continuous spectrum. And each individual patient will have their own health concerns and their own health comorbidities and their own wishes. And we always have to make sure that we match our therapies, the disease seriousness, and the patient’s wishes, which is also stemming from their own other health battles, too.  

We cannot turn a blind eye to the other health issues going on. That plays a major factor as we choose to discuss bone marrow transplantation with patients. Because that’s when the medical comorbidities are often the first barrier to go through.  

Katherine:

Are there specific biomarkers that may affect prognosis or treatment?  

Dr. Yacoub:

Yes. So, and we’re glad that actually myeloproliferative neoplasms are actually the model in medical oncology on how predictors can tell us a lot more about the patient’s future about the prognosis. So, early on in MPNs, we’ve developed models, like the International Prognostic Scoring Systems in many different iterations. And more recently, the Molecular Based International Prognostic Scores.  

They factor in patient’s age, they factor in blood numbers, they factor in DNA abnormalities, they also factor in DNA mutations, including the common driver mutations JAK2 and CALR and MPL, as well as more novel mutations that we call higher risk mutations.  

So, based on these models, we use these tools to predict how the cancer will behave, and how to approach it. This advancement has been an application for our MPN patients for a while, way ahead of all other fields of oncology. So, we’re proud that we can give our patients this tool before all other doctors were able to. Yeah.   

How Treatment Goals Impact MPN Treatment Decisions

How Treatment Goals Impact MPN Treatment Decisions from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

Dr. Abdulraheem Yacoub, an MPN specialist, reviews treatment goals for patients with essential thrombocythemia (ET), polycthemia vera (PV), and myelofibrosis (MF). Dr. Yacoub goes on to explain factors that may impact treatment decisions, including the management of symptoms and side effects. 

Dr. Abdulraheem Yacoub is a hematologist oncologist at the University of Kansas Cancer Center. Dr. Yacoub is an active researcher and is an Associate Professor of Hematologic Malignancies and Cellular Therapeutics. Learn more about Dr. Yacoub, here.
 

Related Programs:

 
What Are Treatment Options for Essential Thrombocythemia?

What Are Treatment Options for Essential Thrombocythemia?

What Are Treatment Options for Polycythemia Vera?

What Are Treatment Options for Polycythemia Vera?

What Are Treatment Options for Myelofibrosis?

What Are Treatment Options for Myelofibrosis?


Transcript:

Katherine:

To give our patient audience some context before we get into the specifics of MPN treatment approaches, how would you define treatment goals?  

Dr. Yacoub:

Thank you, thank you. And I always like to highlight and emphasize that unlike many of the cancer syndromes that patients deal with, myeloproliferative neoplasms are unique. 

These are chronic cancers. There’s no finish line. And this is a disease you live with. It affects every day of your life, every activity of your future life. You plan your life events accordingly. Pregnancies and marriages and trips and all of that. So, this is a chronic cancer. And as we plan therapy, we always factor that in. We would like the cancer to have the least or almost no impact on your daily life.  

Whether it’s symptoms, whether it’s disability and dysfunction and inability to perform your daily functions, whether it’s actual physical symptoms that you’re having from the cancer, or whether it’s affecting complications that are hurting your health. So, we would like to focus on all of these, the medical aspect as well as the impact of the disease to everyday symptoms.  

This is a unique feature of these cancers. And it doesn’t really exist much in other diseases.  

So, as we approach our patients, we would like to get a good assessment of the disease burden to their lives. These can be symptoms. So, we actually have very good objective tools to measure symptoms, such as the MPN-SAF. It’s an objective tool to calculate the symptoms. So, we would like to get an objective baseline of symptoms. 

Because we do want to address the symptoms, regardless of the MPN subtype. We do want to master actually the symptoms because that is what patients feel every day, and we want to affect that early in the treatment. We also would like to get a good assessment of the disease complications. Have the patient suffered a clot or a hemorrhage or symptoms because of an enlarged spleen? Or were they unable to perform certain activities? Are they able to eat? Are they losing weight?  

So, we would like to see how is the cancer also causing them immediate morbidity, and we also would like to tackle the future. So, cancers tend to get worse with time. They tend to transform into a higher risk cancer. So, as we approach any of the MPN patients, we also talk about the future risk of the cancer turning into a more aggressive form of cancer.  

So, we would like if we can, for every patient to focus on these three pillars of their care: their immediate quality of life and symptoms, their immediate complications, and their future disease progression.  

And we would like to factor in that our treatments does not add more side effects to their lives. So, that’s the fourth pillar of how we take care of patients. So, these are the basic concepts that will apply today for all patients with all three diseases.  

Some patients will have more emphasis on one or the other. But this is something in our mind as doctors who treat MPN patients.