Tag Archive for: CLL Video WPS

How to Learn More About Your CLL

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How to Learn More About Your CLL from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

How can you learn more about CLL? CLL Expert Dr. Javier Pinilla-Ibarz shares credible resources and valuable tips to help you become an educated and empowered patient. Want more information? Download the Program Resource Guide here.

Dr. Javier Pinilla-Ibarz is the Lymphoma Section Head and Director of Immunotherapy in the malignant hematology department at Moffitt Cancer Center. More about this expert here.

See More From The Fact or Fiction? CLL Series

Transcript:

Patricia Murphy:        

Okay, well we’ve talked about a lot of treatment and side effects and myths. As an informed patient, I may want to go out on the internet and find out all I can about CLL. What should I be looking for? What should I be careful about when it comes to online awareness and health literacy?

Dr. Javier Pinilla-Ibarz:        

Very, very important topic that I love to really discuss with my patients. I always say that some patients kind of intoxicate themselves with multiple websites and with different backgrounds.

I think we – I do recommend them to really go to the websites, to the websites who really provide a very fair and really clean and important information. I would definitely – we were discussing about the Leukemia Lymphoma Society, CLL Society, Patient Power, to really – National Cancer Institute’s website, places that they have very well filtered information that we can really give to the patient. There is no doubt there’s many others not in this list, but I think we always have to be aware that there’s other websites that may not really provide really, really a good information or may really confuse our patients. So, I like to always really go to the sources that I really trust the most.

Patricia Murphy:

Yeah, so reputable sources and always checking with your doctor, obviously, about things that you’re considering.

Dr. Javier Pinilla-Ibarz:        

Absolutely. Absolutely. I always tell to my patients, “You go there, you look at that, you read, but then after that you have a question. Come because sometimes you may have misconceptions.”

Tips for Determining the Best CLL Treatment for You

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Tips for Determining the Best CLL Treatment for You from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

CLL expert Dr. Javier Pinilla-Ibarz explains how a treatment regimen is chosen, stressing the important role that patient preference plays in making a decision. Want more information? Download the Program Resource Guide here.

Dr. Javier Pinilla-Ibarz is the Lymphoma Section Head and Director of Immunotherapy in the malignant hematology department at Moffitt Cancer Center. More about this expert here.

See More From The Fact or Fiction? CLL Series

Transcript:

Patricia Murphy:        

What are the things that you’re thinking about when you’re considering treatment for your patients, when you’re making those decisions?

Dr. Javier Pinilla:        

Well, I think it’s important to really notice and to really understand my patient, is that we need to provide education. We need to provide education, and obviously, every – many, many patients ask me, “Doctor, what I should do?” Right?

But I think it’s very important for me to understand what is the goals of every patient, right? Age, comorbid condition, way of life, people like to travel versus staying in the same place. So, I try to really educate about the options because we are very lucky that we have multiple options. We also understand – so, what is gonna be the difficulty is to really get therapy A versus therapy B and how much control or monitoring they require, and finally also, as mentioned before, to try to customize therapies for different patients.

I always say that – we discuss in the beginning that not everyone with CLL requires therapy at the beginning. However, when people require therapy, not everyone requires therapy for the same reason. Some people may require therapy because they are anemic, okay, extreme anemia. Why? Because their bone marrow cannot really produce enough red cells or even platelets. Why? Because they is full of CLL cells.

So, those patients in my opinion, they can really do very well with strategies as BCL-2 inhibitor in combination and alone. Why? Because these drugs is able to truly and very, very efficaciously really eliminate the CLL.

So, we go into another scenario. Patient with very high, bulky lymph nodes in the neck, axillary and abdominal, for example, with enlarged spleen who may have very, very severe B-cell symptoms. We note that we cannot apply anything. There’s no doubt that introduction of Bruton’s tyrosine kinase inhibitor or even – is extremely successful in reducing the symptomatology very fast and shrinking the lymph nodes in a very short period of time. So, again, I would say that it’s black and blue or like a black and white and – different.

Patricia Murphy:        

Black and white.

Dr. Javier Pinilla:        

Black and white. Thank you. So, but the truth is different patients may require different strategies, and obviously, patients’ preference are really, really important.

Patient may come back to be in therapy for life, maybe patient maybe don’t care. Patient may really, really, really want specifically shorter therapy. So, I think we need to really understand that in the options and start to work with them, also depending on the presentation on the needs for therapy.

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Nervous About a Second Opinion? How to Confront Your Fears

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Nervous About A Second Opinion? How to Confront Your Fears. from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo. 

Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) patients may be hesitant to ask for a second opinion to help guide their care and treatment choices. Dr. Brian Koffman shares his advice for confronting fears and becoming a confident self-advocate. Need help speaking up? Download the Find Your Voice Resource Guide here.

Dr. Brian Koffman is the cofounder, chief medical officer, and executive vice president of The CLL Society.

See More From The Pro-Active CLL Patient Toolkit

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Transcript:

Dr. Koffman:   

It’s a relatively rare cancer, and most hematologists and oncologists are busy taking care of the more common cancers, like breast, colon, prostate, or lung cancer.

So, they don’t really have a lot of experience compared to a CLL expert who only sees CLL patients, or more than half their practice is CLL patients, in terms of taking care of those patients. There are roughly 20,000 hematologist/oncologists in the USA, and there are roughly 20,000 new patients diagnosed with CLL a year, so if you do the math, you can figure out a community hematologist might be seeing one new CLL patient every year.

So, you wouldn’t see a surgeon who does one hernia repair a year, you’d see one who does many every week. So – and, it’s not just that these people have more experience. There’s research that shows that there’s a survival benefit to seeing a CLL expert, and people live roughly two years longer – based on some old research – by just having an expert as part of their team.

Above and beyond that, CLL is being revolutionized in how it’s being treated, and there’s all kinds of new therapy, and what the best treatment today will be upstaged by a better treatment next month, perhaps. So, unless you’re really focused on CLL, you’re not gonna be aware of what the latest data, what the latest research is, so it’s critically important because they’re on top of what the latest research is, they’re on top of what the latest clinical trials are, they’re on top of the best way to use the new medications that are available, and they provide you with significant survival advantage and management of some of the potential complications with CLL.

So, some people are concerned about getting a second opinion because they’re worried that it might portray to their doctor that they don’t have trust in their judgement or that they’re not happy with the care that they’re getting. Well, as a retired physician, let me assure you that most doctors are very thick-skinned, and we generally welcome people getting another opinion – a second opinion – and medicine is collaborative, and so, most doctors aren’t hesitant about you doing that, and welcome that. Bluntly, if you have a doctor who doesn’t want you to get a second opinion, that would be, for me, a real urgency to get a second opinion.

If hesitant or nervous about getting a second opinion, what I would encourage you to do is think hard about what – whose skin is in this game. Who is the person who has the disease? Who is the person that’s gonna benefit from getting that extra information? So, what is the worst that could happen? The worst that could happen is that you could see the expert, get an opinion that’s identical to your own physician’s, and that just inspires confidence in what’s going on.

The other thing that could happen is there might be an alternative that’s more attractive – less toxic, more effective – and wouldn’t you kick yourself if you hadn’t taken that chance and pursued getting that extra information? So, it’s – every medical decision should be a shared medical decision, and it’s all right as patients to ask for that second opinion and just…not to be hesitant about doing it.

Really, again, it’s rare that a doctor is gonna object to you doing that, and if your doctor objects, then I think you’ve gotta look at what that means, and especially in view of the data, there’s a survival advantage to getting a second opinion.