Tag Archive for: bone lesions

How is Multiple Myeloma Staged?

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How is Multiple Myeloma Staged? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

How is staging used in multiple myeloma? Watch as expert Dr. Abdullah Khan explains staging and its use, and myeloma patient and Empowerment Lead Lisa Hatfield shares how the use of staging and its factors have evolved over time.

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Transcript:

Healthcare professionals use a combination of lab test results, imaging tests, and bone marrow exams to determine the stage of multiple myeloma. The revised International Staging System or Durie-Salmon Staging System may be used in determining a patient’s multiple myeloma stage. 

Dr. Abdullah Khan:

“The patients are assigned stages I to III. To determine the ISS you need lab values for the beta-2 microglobulin and albumin. For the revised ISS, you add on the lab value for LDH, lactate dehydrogenase, and you also add in the chromosome risk profile. So, there are certain genetic changes that predict a more aggressive myeloma. And the ones added to the revised ISS staging system are translocation 4;14, translocation 14;16, and deletion 17p.” 

Lisa Hatfield:

So staging with multiple myeloma is really unique. A lot of times people think that every cancer has four stages. That is not true with myeloma. There are three stages for myeloma. And even now as of this year, some providers, some oncologists are not even staging myeloma. They’re looking at the risk factors, the cytogenetic risk factors to see if you’re standard risk or high risk. They’re not even using the staging system. It’s interesting. Back when I was diagnosed back in 2018, there were two staging systems used. One was the Durie-Salmon scale. I was diagnosed as stage III, which is the highest level. Mine was based on the fact that I had a lot of bone lesions and bone involvement.

But there’s also one called R-ISS, the revised ISS staging. And that one I was staged at stage I. So it’s really important to get a myeloma specialist on board quickly, because my myeloma specialist explained why I had two different stages I was staged at. She used the R-ISS, the more current system, the stage I and also looked at my cytogenetic risk factors. So your doctor will talk to you about FISH testing. And FISH testing might show something like translocations in the myeloma cells themselves or genetic abnormalities in the myeloma cells themselves. And that helps them dictate also what your risk will be going forward and how to treat that, how to treat your myeloma as a result of those risk factors and the stage you’re diagnosed at.

Your care provider may use other criteria in determining a person’s best optimal treatment. Make sure to ask if you have additional questions.

Understanding MGUS & Smoldering Myeloma: What’s the Difference?

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Understanding MGUS & Smoldering Myeloma: What’s the Difference? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

Myeloma expert Dr. Irene Ghobrial explains the difference between the precursor conditions, MGUS (monocloncal gammopathy of undetermined significance) and smoldering myeloma, including how these conditions are detected.

Dr. Irene Ghobrial is Director of the Clinical Investigator Research Program at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Learn more about Dr. Ghobrial.

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Transcript:

Katherine Banwell:

Dr. Ghobrial, what is MGUS? 

Dr. Irene Ghobrial:

So MGUS, or monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance, is a precursor or the stage before myeloma happens, and it’s actually a very common disease or entity in many, many of us as we get older. In fact, maybe 5 percent of the population over the age of 50 would have this early MGUS. 

It doesn’t mean that it’s cancer. It’s a precursor to cancer, and we can talk more about it as we go on. 

Katherine Banwell:

All right. Is it the same as smoldering myeloma, or is that something different? 

Dr. Irene Ghobrial:

It’s not. It’s an earlier stage than smoldering myeloma, and it’s hard to actually make the right definitions. But currently what we say is if you have more than 10 percent cancer cells or plasma cells in your bone marrow, then it’s smoldering myeloma. And by the name, smoldering, it’s almost myeloma. It’s ready to go on fire, but it’s not there yet.  

MGUS is before that, and the difference is that the chance of progression from MGUS to myeloma is only 1 percent per year, so many, many people will never progress to myeloma. While smoldering myeloma, just because there are more cancer cells in the bone marrow, has a higher chance of progressing, which is 10 percent per year. And in some people, a very high chance of progression of 50 percent in two years. 

And we want to make sure that we catch those cases early and not wait for myeloma to happen. 

Katherine Banwell:

How would you define myeloma? 

Dr. Irene Ghobrial:

So, myeloma is currently defined as the same thing. The number of plasma cells in the bone marrow could be above 10 percent or more, or you have a protein in the blood. But the problem is that you’ve already had problems. You’ve had symptoms of end organ damage, so we have either high calcium, bone lesions, or bone fractures, anemia, kidney failure.  

And then now or more recently, we added a few more things to tell us these people are going to really develop myeloma soon. So, it used to be part of smoldering myeloma, now it’s part of the definition of myeloma, so that we can treat patients earlier, which is if your light chain level is very high, above 100 for a ratio, or if you have multiple lesions by something called an MRI or a PET CT scan instead of the traditional X-rays, or if your bone marrow has a lot of the plasma cells, more than 60 percent. 

And these were new definitions to make sure we don’t wait too much until people have an organ damage or symptoms and then we treat them. And you’ll hear from us that we think we should be treating people even earlier than that.